


The Sanctuary Scoundrel

by roboemma



Series: The Ivven Trilogy [1]
Category: Star Wars Legends - All Media Types, Star Wars Original Trilogy
Genre: Dark Times, Mandalorian, Original Character(s), Scoundrels, smugglers, star wars legends - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-06
Updated: 2020-01-27
Packaged: 2021-01-24 07:28:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 10
Words: 51,297
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21334495
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/roboemma/pseuds/roboemma
Summary: It is DARK TIMES for the citizens and the rogues of the galaxy alike. The Empire rules with an iron fist, and what they do not control is dominated by the CRIME SYNDICATES. Sentients are left to determine whether to submit, or take their chances in defiance.Disillusioned with her people, IVVEN OYRE, a MANDALORIAN displaced by the Empire’s dominion of her world, finds work as a high-risk SMUGGLER, using her heritage to her advantage in scoring lucrative, dangerous jobs.Content to drift, her work takes her again to the Smugglers’ Moon of NAR SHADDAA, where fate, or chance, schemes to disrupt her plans...
Series: The Ivven Trilogy [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1537957
Kudos: 16





	1. Chapter One

_ 5 BBY _

There were two types of people on Nar Shaddaa: the notorious, and the invisible. Success came in knowing in which of these categories one belonged, and doing everything within one’s power to remain there.

Ivven Oyre’s fingertips grazed the top of the hatch as the ramp lowered to let her out of her ship; the _ Sanctuary Swan _ blasted steam and exhaust from various ports on its underside, to swirl upon the landing deck. Wearing a simple white shirt tucked lopsidedly under a gearbelt, and formfit trousers that disappeared into tall black boots, Ivven looked much to be the spacer she was. She checked that her blasters felt properly situated in their holsters, one over her backside and two at her hips, before stepping out onto the landing pad. She stopped to turn and look back at her only companion of years-- and one of the few people she could actually tolerate-- a tall, striking Selonian. Her friend stood at the top of the incline, her glossy black fur rippling as she tossed Ivven a jacket.

“You coming, Shaltho?” Ivven prompted, slipping her arms into the rust orange sleeves and wresting her long, fluffy blonde hair out from under the collar.

Shaltho hovered in the shadows, bobbing her head in an alien way, as if smelling the air. 

“<I’ve not quite adjusted>,” she graveled in her own language. “<I’ll let you handle the logistics.>”

“Oh, _ I'm _ paying the docking fee, now?” Ivven ribbed, raising both eyebrows.

Shaltho just canted her shoulders innocently.

She wasn’t about to coax the agoraphobic from the ship if she didn’t want to be. Ivven snorted and turned back around, striding across the deck toward the docking port office. She waved the approaching mechanics away with a terse flick of her arm.

“Fuel _ only _,” she stated sternly with a jerk of her thumb.

A gust picked up, sweeping aggressively over the pad perched over open air with no guardrails to be seen. Her loose hair tossed back from her face, the smells of Nar Shaddaa-- fuel, waste, and durasteel-- hitting her full force. Though there were plenty of places to leave a ship on Nar Shaddaa for free, a vetted landing platform was worth the semblance of peace of mind, on the occasion. She left her fee with the docking manager, then set off in the direction of Tigan Jucano’s warehouse. The unusually large number of drop points on their latest delivery circuit had stretched their funds--

\-- but now it was time to collect.

The middleman of a medium-sized smuggling operation with a far too developed opinion of himself, Jucano was as high up this particular chain as Ivven had ever had visibility to. She preferred it that way: the middleman was less easily offended, less dangerous. Jucano was a coward, and she could count on that consistency. Ivven wasn’t convinced that he ever left the warehouse he operated out of; no matter what time she popped in, he always seemed to be there. Likely the warehouse may have been one of the safest places on Nar Shaddaa for him to actually reside; Jucano’s bosses probably protected their store of products in ways they would never show the same dignity to sentients.

As expected, Jucano was present, perking up when he saw her enter through the wide loading bay entry. He lowered the datapad that Ivven _ also _ wasn’t convinced wasn’t permanently attached to his hand.

“Captain Oyre!” the Cathar greeted her with aggravating fervor. “Got word you hit the last drop. I’ve got your credits all lined up for you.”

“My favorite thing to hear,” Ivven replied levelly, refusing to match his disingenuous demeanor. She had done the odd, in-between job for Jucano for several years now, regarding him with carefully contained distaste. She knew his friendliness ended where he could squeeze a few more credits out of an operation, and that left little for his direct reports who struggled to feed themselves. As far as cruelty could go on Nar Shaddaa, however, slave wages were nothing, when there was the _ actual _slave trade to deal with.

Jucano keyed something into the datapad. “I have another job for you as well, if you’re open. Should be a quick turn.”

“Hit me,” Ivven clipped.

“It’s a pickup this time,” Jucano went on, pacing in front of a lineup of crates. “Travel to location, load goods, return here.”

“What’s the cargo?” she asked.

“Weapons shipment,” Jucano stated vaguely. “The hard work’s been done for you; they’re already in the hands of one of my contacts. Just need someone with a ship to scoop the product.”

Likely so they could modify them illegally and resell.

“If the hard work’s already been done, it might not be worth my time,” Ivven negotiated.

Jucano named a figure.

“I was mistaken. I’m interested,” she agreed.

“Glad to hear it,” Jucano said, keying at his datapad. “I’m sending the details to your ship.”

“If that’s all...” Ivven prompted, beginning to turn on her heel; she didn’t care to prolong smalltalk with Tigan Jucano any more than necessary.

“Ah. That’s what I like about working with you, Ivven,” Jucano appraised, talking after her as she made her retreat. “You only care about the job!”

* * *

At a standing table, Ivven set her drink down. She leaned her elbows on the hard surface, hooking one toe of her boot over the ankle of the opposite foot, her body draped over the tumbler.

She liked the glare here; this cantina was the perfect ode to Nar Shaddaa’s overindulgence, a cacophony of sound and an even gaudier display of flashing color. The vid screens fought with the glitz of the lit edging fixtures, and the glow of the drinks vied for attention over the glimmering holodancers. The competing lights were like a film over Ivven’s eyes, a haze thicker than smoke. Better than a dim cantina; the preference was a holdover from the days before her rod implants, from a time when she couldn’t see in low light-- a uniquely Hapan disadvantage.

But something in the air was tense tonight. Ivven felt it between her shoulders before she lifted her eyes from her glass to scan the cantina.

“<It’s your friend.>” Shaltho appeared at her elbow, answering her unspoken question.

Ivven cocked an eyebrow in Shaltho’s direction. “_ My _friend?”

Shaltho pointed with her glass. Ivven followed the gesture, then groaned inwardly when she saw it.

“<Going to do something?>” Shaltho murmured.

“Last thing I need. I forgot why I stopped coming here.”

“<Nothing better to do>,” Shaltho prodded knowingly, almost bemused; she tipped her drink back and forth, the lights glinting on the surface of the liquid as it swirled. “<Been awhile since you’ve had a row over him.>”

Ivven scoffed, but it was a much uglier scoff than she even intended. “Don’t say it like that, ‘a _ row _’.”

Ivven huffed out a long breath of air in defeat and pushed herself back from the table. She stepped around it and in the direction of the brewing altercation. Her gearbelt and holsters rocked on her hips as she pointedly crossed the cantina.

“Gentlebeings,” she announced, raising her voice to carry above the music and clinking of glasses, if only in that particular corner. She stood behind the group with her weight balanced equally on each foot. “Fine evening to do this somewhere else, don’t you think?”

The three assailants, two of them human and the final a Devaronian, turned their shoulders to look around at who had interrupted their shakedown, revealing their prey to be a much smaller, visibly nervous, but stupidly grinning Twi’lek backed up against a table edge. His smile grew even stupider when he saw Ivven.

“Ivven!” Jav Catla burst, his relief approaching gleeful. “Kriff, am I-”

The Devaronian interrupted him before he could finish.

“Take a walk, lady,” he hissed. “If you don’t have the stomach for it, I suggest you leave.”

Instead of taking the advice, Ivven just countered with a disconcerting, “I’m not leaving until I hear him squeal.”

Then, before they could react to stop her, she marched straight forward between the little passageway their bodies made. Jav’s hands were still up by his head, palms out in a display of defeat, but his eyes lit when she approached him. His expression abruptly flashed to confusion when she roughly grabbed hold of the front of his collar with one fist; the other fist came forward with a quick pop at elbow level to crack him straight in the nose, slamming him backwards onto the table with the momentum. The surface shook loudly with the impact; Jav let out a yelp of surprised pain, and his hands snapped over the wrist pinning him down at his neck, the tabletop just a bit too high for the toes of his boots to scrape anything but uselessly on the floor.

Ivven ignored Jav’s grunts of protest and turned her neck to look back at the three would-be assailants, who stared at her in suspense, thrown by her actions.

“Mind if I have the first go?” Ivven lilted at them. Jav squirmed under her fist, still trapped on the table. “I’ve been waiting weeks myself to do him in. Would ruin my night to miss my opportunity.” Her voice was a pout.

There was a thick pause, then one of the humans started to laugh. The group visibly throttled back.

“After you, ma’am,” the man invited with another brusque laugh.

“Thank you, Sweetheart,” Ivven said coquettishly.

Ivven released Jav’s shirtfront and took a step back. His breath puffed out in release, sending blood gurgling from his nostrils in an awkward spray that he caught with the back of his wrist as he sat forward and his feet found the floor again.

In an over-exaggerated display, Ivven swung at Jav and caught him in the jaw, her hand snagging in the inside of his shirt collar again on its way by. ‘Losing’ her balance, she tumbled forward over the edge of the table, toppling it over while taking Jav to the ground with her. They hit the floor roughly, the upturned surface momentarily blocking the view between them and the aggressors. 

“_Go _,” she snarled, shoving Jav toward the small tunnel a line of booths created from their vantage point on the floor: their escape route. Jav caught on, and they clammored on their elbows under the shadow of the furniture until they could wrap around to another section of the cantina, out of the way before their assailants were any the wiser. They both popped up when it was safe, and took the long way back around to where Shaltho had set up farther away from the scuffle. The chaotic surroundings of the rather extensive interior of the cantina had disguised the entire encounter.

“Was that supposed to be helpful?” Jav panted through blood, his voice nasally.

“Stop whining,” Ivven quipped, palming a cloth from a table as they passed and pushing it over his nose. He took it, sopping up the mess. “You think I was going to fight three thugs for you? Be happy I helped at all, or you would have had a lot worse than this.”

“Do you realize how many times I’ve had my nose broken?” Jav just griped through the fabric, his eyes teary with pain.

“It’s not broken. Don’t be dramatic.”

“Hello, Jav,” Shaltho greeted them warmly when they reached the table. Ivven shot her a sour expression as she took her spot next to her.

“Nice to see you, Shaltho,” Jav replied cheerfully, taking the spot opposite them, the ugly smears of blood all over his face doing nothing to hamper his mood. In fact, he seemed to disregard his disheveled state entirely, in that frustrating, incurably good-tempered way of his.

Ivven’s smattering of brief contacts since meeting Jav Catla three years ago often went this way. A small, scrappy-looking scoundrel who worked as a nobody warehouse hand and fetch-boy for anything Jucano needed, Jav had a bright smile and even brighter eyes. He seemed to have a penchant for getting in over his head, both unlucky for the amount of trouble he seemed to magnet to himself, and lucky for the sheer many times he was able to get out of it with his good-humor intact. Ivven was a little surprised every time she returned to Nar Shaddaa to learn that he was still alive. Occasionally operating on Nar Shaddaa was one thing; Jav _ lived _ here, and that was a whole different level of dangerous.

“So, what sort of trouble you two been getting into since I last saw you?” Jav asked conversationally, gesturing to a waitress. Ivven rolled her eyes. “Feel like it’s been awhile.”

“I’m sure nothing compared to what you’ve experienced,” Shaltho said almost slyly, still in Basic so that Jav could understand her. “See, _ good _ smugglers don’t _ get _ in trouble. They just make money.”

Jav laughed, pleased. “I’m afraid I may have it the other way around a lot of the time, fair point.”

A waitress set a glass of water down on the table. Jav pulled it over and dipped his soiled cloth into it, the water going murky immediately. He wiped around his cheekbones, trying to collect the blood, but there was enough dried on at this point that it wasn’t going away without a shower.

“Thanks for the assist, I suppose,” he concluded, setting the cloth down on the table and tucking one of his long lekku, anchored close to the base of his skull, around his front to disguise the bloodstains on his shirt.

“What did you do to get such a rise out of them?” Shaltho queried.

“Please don’t encourage him,” Ivven moaned.

“You know, why didn’t you let _ her _ handle it?” Jav dodged the question, speaking to Ivven but pointing across the table at Shaltho. “Probably would have ended in less of my tears.”

“I’m not very charming,” Shaltho reasoned.

“Well, your friend,” Jav accused, cocking his head in Ivven’s direction, “knows how to _ pretend _ to be charming. Wish she would try pretending towards _ me _ more often.”

“What, you don’t like the real me?” Ivven held her arms out to her sides with her best, _ ’who, me?’ _ expression.

“I can let you get back to brooding, if you’d like,” Jav fired back.

“Nothing would make me _ happier _,” Ivven hissed without pause.

Shaltho sissed with laughter at the both of them.

“You going to be on planet much longer?” Jav asked them, changing the tone and the subject in an instant.

“ ‘Fraid not,” Ivven said, going along with it. “Jucano had a job waiting for us.”

“You should dump that contact,” Jav said, suddenly surly. He moved an arm across the table to take her drink, but Ivven just pulled it out of his reach. “He’s been shortchanging a lot of his runners lately.”

“Coming from the man who works for him?” Shaltho pointed out.

Jav put his palms up. “Doesn’t mean I can’t warn people away from a swindle when I smell one.”

“You’re sweet. Jucano’s smart enough to know not to cross me,” Ivven said darkly.

“Hope so. For his sake. And my job’s sake,” Jav said unsurely.

They were interrupted.

“Hey! What in the hells…?”

The group that had been harassing Jav had found them again, and they didn’t seem too happy to discover that Ivven hadn’t, in fact, beaten him to a pulp, and was instead having a chat. Jav didn’t bolt, but he and Shaltho just took two steps back from the table. Ivven didn’t move.

“Seems we worked out our differences,” Ivven drawled out, lazily turning her head to look at them.

“You think you can play me for a fool?” one of the humans demanded hotly. “You’re _ dead _.”

“Move,” Ivven just clipped tonelessly toward her companions.

Shaltho and Jav acted immediately, juking out of the way; at the same instant, Ivven snatched up a tumbler in each hand and pitched them both straight into the faces of the two closest targets. The glass shattered as it struck, and they reeled back with startled shouts, bumping their final companion off balance as they were temporarily blinded by the contents. With a burst of sound from her lungs, Ivven caught the frontmost man with a kick to his left hip, causing him to buckle over unevenly and sending him stumbling sideways into the other. They both fumbled the two-step stairway behind them that formed a lofted section of the cantina, and crashed down to the floor. At that moment, Jav appeared at her side handling a stool by the legs, smashing it into the gut of the remaining Devaronian.

A bartender began to scream at them, but Ivven and her associates were already swiftly making their way to the establishment’s exit before anyone could regroup. They followed Jav’s deft knowledge of the layout of the sector to assure they wouldn’t be followed, before he returned them somewhere near where the _ Sanctuary Swan _, was docked.

“You ruined my night, Catla,” Ivven complained.

“A cantina fight_ and _ a broken nose,” Shaltho mocked. “You’re really going for all the classics this evening.”

“This is _ every _ night on Nar Shaddaa!” Jav said with a triumphant spread of his arms. “Makes you feel alive, doesn’t it? Those three weren’t going to do much; I know them.”

“Getting _ off _ the planet after being on it makes me feel alive,” Ivven corrected dryly. Shaltho chuckled.

“Yeah, well, I’m stuck here,” Jav said, pocketing his hands. “You two should make a point to come by and see me when you get back from your next job.”

“Unlikely,” Ivven replied.

“We’ll try,” Shaltho said at the same time.

Ivven began to walk in the direction of the landing pad.

“Just try not to get yourself _ killed _ ?” she requested over her shoulder. “I don’t dislike you _ that _much, kid.”

“Had me fooled,” he called after her.

* * *

_ 13 BBY - Eight years ago _

ORBITAL FUELING STATION - NEAR TETH

Ivven startled when she caught the flick of glossy black fur rippling out of the corner of her eye, and had her blaster drawn before she realized it was out of its holster.

The terrified creature, still partially obscured by shadows, nearly knocked over the trash compactor bin beside it with a loud crash, trying to press itself into the wall it was hiding against.

“_ Sa-! Anda _ … please, _ sandaba _, not go-” The being kept dipping in and out of Basic, word by word, in her gravelly, glottal, alien voice.

Having spent some time on Corellia before, Ivven’s brain finally caught up to her eyes and ears, and she recognized the figure of a Selonian in front of her. The Selonian kept speaking, so frantic she couldn’t form a full sentence in any single language. Ivven shook herself, lowering the blaster and putting her hands out in a _ stay calm _ gesture.

“Sorry, I didn’t see you! Please slow down, _ Sa-... Bellorna-cra mandaba? Kurso-cra, kurso-cra. _ ” Ivven clawed for purchase on a dialect she hadn’t been exposed to in years, and had never attempted speaking in that time. _ You speak Mandaba? You’re okay, you’re okay. _

Hearing even Ivven’s childish attempts at Home Talk stilled the Selonian’s panicky pleas. Her chest rose and fell at a quick pace, but her glittering black eyes refocused under her stained fabric hood.

“_ Bellorna-cra ecto mandaba-sa? _” the Selonian breathed quietly, in awe.

“Very little,” Ivven responded, putting her blaster away gently. “Do you understand Basic?”

“Yes,” the Selonian responded. “Bad at speaking,” she elaborated.

“That’s fine,” Ivven assured her. “I understand you, and you understand me. What are you doing here?”

The Selonian finally pressed herself off the wall slightly.

“<I’m… not safe>,” she said in Mandaba. “<Please, forget you saw me. I don’t have anything to take>.”

“I’m not here to steal from you,” Ivven corrected her. She made a supposition. “You’re a long way from Selonia.”

“<Not from Selonia>,” she responded. “<From... Corellia.>”

Ivven didn’t need to hear her story to know a fugitive of the Empire when she saw one: stripped of pride, paralyzed by fear, and stranded very far from home. Selonians weren’t a solitary people, usually living in dens with a wide, extended family structure. This one was very alone.

Something pulled at Ivven about the Selonian’s plight, and she felt a tug of frustration with herself. The words were leaving her mouth, against her own judgement, before she could stop them.

“Do you need a lift?”

* * *

_ 8 BBY - Three years ago _

NAR SHADDAA

Ivven’s dissatisfaction was apparent in the way she marched into Jucano’s warehouse; Jucano was there to intercept her, moving to talk before she could express her discontent.

“The shipment we promised you is on planet, we’re just having some trouble with getting it here,” he soothed.

“Why are you making this my problem?” Ivven snapped at him. “Where is the shipment _ now? _”

Jucano waved for a warehouse hand to approach, and someone moved out of the line of ceiling-high shelving units. Ivven pushed her curtain of hair back behind her shoulder to better look at the man. “Man” was generous; he couldn’t have been barely older than his teenaged years. A Twi’lek with light, human-toned skin and blotchy blue discolorations around his cheeks and the underside of his headtails, he looked wildly unassuming.

“This is Jav Catla. He works for me,” Jucano introduced.

Catla stepped closer and offered a hand. “Nice to meet you,” he said with a genuine air about him, his vocal quality matching with his obvious juvenility.

“...Ivven Oyre,” Ivven replied skeptically, not taking the hand. She eyed Jucano suspiciously.

The Cathar leapt in to explain.

“Jav does a lot of on-planet transport for me. But, we foresee some issues with getting ahold of your product this time. We’re afraid our handler has gone rogue. It would…_ speed the process up _... if you would be willing to accompany Jav to retrieve the shipment yourself.”

“Don’t you have common thugs for that?” Ivven snapped. “I’m no babysitter.”

Jav raised a brow at her, but he didn’t appear particularly offended. “I know how to use a blaster, you know. I’m not helpless,” he stated, almost patiently.

“Well,” Jucano backpedaled, “we’re not sure the situation will merit that much force-”

“Yeah, I get it. Fine,” Ivven interrupted sharply with a dismissive flick of her hand. “Just tell me where this _ schutta _ is so I can get going.”

Ivven waited only long enough for Jucano to give her the coordinates, before setting off at a brisk pace with the Catla kid on her heels.

“The speeder’s out back,” he said.

They didn’t walk in silence long.

“You an Imperial?” Jav asked out of nowhere. He explained, “The accent…”

“No,” Ivven dismissed.

“Got it,” Jav said, pocketing both hands.

She looked sidelong at him. “Got a problem with Imperials?”

Jav tipped an ear toward one shoulder. “Don’t really have a problem with anybody. People don’t have ideals on Nar Shaddaa; not like it gets you anywhere.”

Ivven _ tssssed _, amused by the sudden and unexpected social commentary. She reevaluated him.

“How old are you, kid?”

“Twenty,” Jav answered, and glanced over at her. Then, seriously, “Not a kid.”

“Suit yourself.” Ivven backed off with a shrug.

He had an unforced air of pride about him. Ivven could see his clothes were worn thin, permanently stained by oils, but washed and currently clean; too big for him, he smacked of someone who had stayed small from being underfed their whole life.

“Speeder’s right here,” Jav indicated with a point.

Ivven was uncharacteristically struck by pity. Working smalltime for a smuggling ring was dangerous and didn’t pay well; it was where down-on-their-luck beings ended up out of desperation. Not everyone was raised to be as self-sufficient as Ivven had been. Not everyone could rise above what was happening in the galaxy.

He just didn’t look the type. His bright hazel eyes betrayed too much honesty. He wasn’t going to last long in this life.

“You know, not everyone with this accent is an Imperial. It’s a Core accent.” Ivven felt compelled to elaborate.

Jav shrugged, reaching over the side of the speeder to flick it on. “I’ve never been farther Mid Rim than this.”

His galaxy was small, indeed.

  
  
  


It was one of the first things Jav noted about Ivven: she spoke perfect Huttese. Jav didn’t hear in her voice the common Basic-speaker’s accent most humans had when speaking it.

She also spoke perfect Basic, often sounding Imperial, but then weaving in and out of clear exposure to the Outer Rim. He couldn’t place where she might have come from. Asking didn’t yield results, just snappish deflections. Jav should have known better-- no one on Nar Shaddaa wanted to offer their life’s story-- but he wasn’t a quick learner.

He decided she must have been a former Imperial, maybe a field agent of some sort. Maybe she still was. Jav wouldn’t be entirely heartbroken if she were here to shut down Jucano’s operation. But even the Empire didn’t really try to control crime in Hutt Space. So long as they could purchase slaves and source bounty hunters, so long as Moffs with too many credits could get their spice fix, there was no reason to interrupt the balance here.

Ivven, just a bit too alien to be _ entirely _ human-- he was still trying to piece together a story for her in his head-- turned to him from her argument with the Snivvian in front of them and switched seamlessly from Huttese back into Basic.

“You want to step in here?” she prompted curtly, sounding more inconvenienced than angry with having to shake down one of Jucano’s contacts for a shipment that was meant for her.

Interrupted from his thoughts, Jav took a step forward.

“<My friend here just wants what was promised her>,” he said in Huttese. “<If Jucano is shorting you, this isn’t the way to make it back; you’re stealing from the Captain here.>”

Jav glanced over at her, and couldn’t help but focus on the little tattoo on her chin that made him think maybe she could be a pirate, or work for them; it looked vaguely like a Hutt kajidic symbol. Maybe she served her own masters. 

“<I wouldn’t want her for an enemy>,” he conjectured, and meant it.

Ivven stepped closer to the Snivvian, too close for comfort.

The alien’s confidence seemed to hitch, and finally he cracked.

They rode back with the shipment in silence.

* * *

_ 7 BBY - Two years ago _

NAR SHADDAA

Jav didn’t seem like the usual scum of Nar Shaddaa, which is why Ivven supposed she enjoyed his company, despite herself, on the occasion that she was on planet. He was genuinely cheerful, talkative and youthful, if not a bit foolish; all traits that raised her ire. But she’d catch him sometimes, when he thought no one was looking, that edge of loneliness.

Cheerful. Not happy. 

Normally, it was drinks at the cantina. Ivven would buy them a dish of something heavy and filling, then discreetly eat very little of it herself; Jav needed the calories.

“You know, I’m not buying it that you’re not an Imperial,” Jav challenged with a wicked smile, leaning over the table at her, his cheeks flushed from the alcohol. “Where were your parents from?”

Ivven dodged the nosy question. “Why would you ask about my parents when you are so obviously an orphan yourself?”

“Gives me the right to be completely imprudent about it,” Jav said with another flash of teeth. “You spying on me?”

“Trying to get me to admit something?” Ivven fired back. “If I were an Imperial spy, do you really think _ you’d _be the one to trip me up?”

Jav laughed, pleased. “Now you’re gettin’ it.”

He pulled his elbows off the table and put his hands in his lap, one palm on each leg.

“Myself, I grew up on some rural backwater you’ll have never heard of,” Jav exposed. “My folks got caught up in the violence there.”

“I didn’t ask,” Ivven interrupted him, but he deftly, or undeftly, ignored it.

“They were killed by Mandalorians,” he stated, far too soberly and without warning.

Ivven was holding her glass only a few centimeters above the tabletop, but it slipped from her fingertips and landed down onto the surface with a solid _ thunk _. She felt her composure falter.

Jav didn’t know what she was.

“Saw them do it,” he just memoired on, far too blasé for the particular topic, his eyes a bit distant. “In front of me. Stormed into our house, and just, _ murdered them _. I was eight.”

“I think you’ve had enough.” Ivven didn’t acknowledge his words, instead breaking the tension and reaching across the table to pull his drink away from him.

Jav laughed at himself suddenly, snapping out of it.

“I’m sorry,” he apologized, sissing with laughter and covering his face groggily with his hands. “That was out of nowhere.”

“No kidding,” Ivven agreed, squirming to get out of the conversation. “You don’t have many people to talk to, do you?”

“The way I run my mouth? Got lots of people to talk to,” Jav observed smartly. “Just nothing to say to them.”

He smacked his palms down on his knees, as if stamping out the conversation. “Well,” he announced. “No good way to transition from that, so let’s just switch topics without one.”

“Uh uh,” Ivven cut him off, putting a palm out to stop him. “Think that’s enough heart-to-heart for me for many months.” She slid off her chair. “I’m going back to my ship. You should go home, too.”

“Oh, I see,” Jav grumbled, giving her a hard time. Oh, he didn’t see at all. “You trick me into spilling _ my _ guts instead, and then run off to your Imperial masters with it.”

“Yep: big-important-Imperial-target Jav Catla,” Ivven joked forcedly. She put credits enough for both their tabs down on the table. “I’ll see you later, kid.”

Jav eyed her knowingly. He had picked up on the strangeness in her tone.

“You say it like you’re not planning on coming back,” he murmured perceptively.

“I’m not someone you should make friends with,” she just replied obliquely.

She’d spare him the disappointment. Jav could never really _ meet _ Ivven.


	2. Chapter Two

_ 5 BBY - Present _

NAR SHADDAA

Ivven felt them drop out of hyperspace. The comm unit on the console in the corner of her quarters promptly began to blink. She glanced at the signature, then opened the channel.

It took a few minutes for the other end to respond again.

“_Hello, Captain,” _she was finally greeted.

“Hello, Voice,” she replied in kind.

_ “I commed earlier_,” Voice started in, before the small holo image had even finished forming. “_Not sure you got it. _”

“The message system’s been fritzy,” Ivven explained.

“_Fig__ured that would be priority number one; how are people supposed to get in contact with you about work? _”

“This isn’t the army, Voice; I can’t just put in to requisitions for a new one. I have to have the credits to get it fixed.”

Voice snorted. “_If it were the army, it would be broken forever._”

Voice was one of the very few of his particular kind left. An officer in the Imperial army, he had fought in the Clone Wars, and it showed in his eyes. And his white hair. And the lines on his face. After so many years, it was easy to not see Jango Fett in his features anymore.

Ivven leaned in.

“Assuming you’ve got something,” she said. “You never comm for leisure chats.”

“_Sorry." _

“Don’t be; the reason I like you.”

“_If it’s any consolation, I’m not looking for anything from you. This call is a friendly warning. If you’re planning to dock at Port Sargha again anytime soon, don’t. The Empire moved in there and is tightening their fist. I may turn a blind eye to what you do when it isn’t interfering with us directly, but the rest of the Empire won’t hesitate to arrest you for your other… dealings. And I’d prefer to keep you open for commission._”

“You don’t know anything of my dealings,” Ivven insisted with a flippant wave of her hand.

Voice raised an eyebrow.

“_Of course not_,” he played along. “_But if you find yourself out that way, for a… _ vacation _ … maybe consider going somewhere else._”

Ivven never divulged too much information to anybody, Voice included; but he always seemed like he knew a bit more than she ever volunteered. It didn’t bother her too much in this case. Voice was discreet, reasonable, and when she worked with him, she worked with _ him, _not the Empire. 

“Thanks for looking out for us,” she acknowledged. It was bad news about Sargha. Voice had somehow been privy to how much she went through that port. It would put a small strain on their operations.

“_Consider it a thank you for your contributions to the Empire._”

It was a particularly far stretch to imply she’d ever done anything to keep it up and running. “I thought all the money they gave me was the thanks.”

“_Pays to be freelance, apparently._”

“That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you for years,” she said.

But Voice was loyal to a fault.

“_Hope to work with you again soon, Captain_,” he said, ignoring the prompt. The holo dissipated, and the call ended.

After checking one last time on their shipment of blasters in the cargo hold, Ivven moved into the cockpit where Shaltho currently resided.

“So, cancel all future stops on Sargha,” Ivven announced.

Shaltho twisted around to look at her from where she sat in the modified pilot’s chair.

“<Oh?>”

“Voice says the Imps are setting up camp there.”

“<That’s upsetting>,” Shaltho echoed her feelings. “<Noted.>”

Ivven dropped into the copilot’s chair. The glow of Nar Shaddaa beneath them loomed outside the viewport. The job had been just as uneventful as Jucano had promised: pick up the blasters, and bring them back. She prepared herself for a mentally taxing, but ultimately boring exchange with the Cathar to match it.

* * *

“Aaaaand, that should be everything!” Jucano announced in that falsely cheerful way of his.

Ivven confirmed that the credits were in her account. She gave a terse nod.

“Oh, and, while you’re here...” Jucano started in, and Ivven prepared herself to turn him down. It was always a bit hard to turn away easy-to-come-by credits, but she was ready to be done working with Jucano for a time. All this safety was making her… antsy. Any two-cred smuggler could perform this sort of work. Ivven’s skillset cried for more.

“I came across an... _ interesting _ bit of information while you were gone,” Jucano continued. “I was wondering if you’d be interested in a _ different _ sort of job.”

Something about his smarmy tone gave Ivven paused.

Jucano gestured for her to step closer to the storage racks, where a small desk was set up amongst a stack of crates, further away from the main corridor where warehouse hands bustled around moving product. Ivven followed, and he lowered his voice. “There’s someone who has become quite a drain on our little operation with his recent actions. We’d like them..._ removed _.”

Ivven felt the hair on the back of her neck prickle.

“I’m no bounty hunter, Jucano,” Ivven stated icily.

He chuckled once to himself and shifted on his feet, acting as though she just hadn’t properly understood him. Jucano produced a handheld holodisplay from his pocket, setting is down and sliding it closer to her on the table with two fingers. It sprang to life, slowly turning a little glowing blue figure in 360 degrees. It took Ivven a few beats to understand what she was looking at. Then, she realized, it was an image of her.

In her Mandalorian armor.

Ivven felt her lip twitch.

It was another few moments before she could even speak, for the icy-hot rage she felt in her throat. She leveled Jucano with a dangerous glare, her liquid orange eyes flashing.

_"You shouldn’t have this.” _

She saw the hitch, the fear and hesitation that rose in Jucano when he realized he had made the wrong call. That satisfied expression left his face.

“I just, thought, maybe that you--...” Jucano stumbled over his recovery. Did he think she’d be_ pleased _he’d dug into her history?

Ivven’s chin didn’t dip, but her eyes flicked down to the holodisplay on the table, as though it had spoken itself, a specter. _ Weakness. _ She reached down with a gloved hand and picked it up, then pocketed it just as quickly, as though it burned. She felt the tightness in her throat release slightly.

“Forget what you’ve ‘_ discovered _ ’ about me,” she instructed, with underlying threat. “You have _ no idea _what it means.”

She left before he could say another word.

* * *

Adrenaline was telling her to run, run, but there was nothing to run from. So instead, Ivven paced a line back and forth in the main hold of her ship. After some time, Shaltho entered the room, back from arranging their next shipment.

“<Product is loaded>,” she said. Sensing the tension, she added “<What’s wrong?>”

“Jucano knew. About _ me_,” Ivven snapped. “Tried to offer me a _ bounty contract.” _

Shaltho was quiet for a moment. Then, gently, she offered, “<It’s not exactly a secret, Ivven.>”

“I decide,” Ivven snarled, jerking a finger toward her own chest. It was a flighty, barely coherent statement, but Shaltho knew her well enough that Ivven could count on her to understand what she meant by it: that control was everything.

Shaltho was quiet again, just waiting to listen, sufferingly patient.

Ivven was angry with herself, she realized. It shouldn’t have affected her that way. She was trying to selectively hide from something that she didn’t disguise half the time herself. But Ivven didn’t want to be lumped in with them, didn’t want to be like them.

Like Mandalorians.

“Was bored of him, anyways,” Ivven deflected in a detached tone that wasn’t entirely sincere. There was no lying to Shaltho, though; she would see through it. “I’m overdue for a little danger.”

“<We have a day or so before we have to leave for the rendezvous>,” Shaltho said. “<But I can see about restocking so we can be off sooner.>”

Ivven nodded her appreciation. Shaltho retreated to the cockpit, leaving Ivven to finally collapse onto the seating rest in the corner.

Jucano had wanted to use the fact that she was a Mandalorian to control her. But only Ivven controlled what being Mandalorian meant to her now. Not even the Mandalorians themselves could decide what they wanted to be anymore, and she refused to be dragged down with them.

She woke, realizing that she’d dozed off, to Shaltho’s figure standing in the doorway to the cockpit access corridor. There was something agitated about her posture.

“<Jav commed>,” Shaltho puffed. “<Message came late. Comms have been patchy.>"

“I know they’ve been patchy, and I don’t have time for him right now,” Ivven dismissed, wanting to hear nothing having to do with Jucano at the moment.

“<No>,” Shaltho refused. “<You’ll want to listen.>”

She crossed to the main console in the center of the room and pulled up a recorded holo message. Ivven sat up. It was audio-only, but there was no mistaking the genuine desperation in the voice.

“_Ivven, look… I don’t know if you’ll get this in time, or if you’d even be willing to help me, but I’ve… really gotten myself into trouble this time. I don’t know what to do._ _Look, I’ve just really messed up. My bosses are after me. I have people after me. I need help…_ kriff, _I need help… Please. Please, I don’t know who else to ask-_”

The message cut out. Ivven could feel that stirring in her chest that she hated so much. She glanced over at Shaltho. Shaltho stared back.

“Guess we know who the hit was,” Ivven said tonelessly.

It took her less than five minutes to change into her gear.

* * *

When she stormed through the warehouse in full Mandalorian armor, her face obscured by a helmet, workers ducked out of her path with gasps and whispers. Jucano cursed and dropped his datapad, backing up against a shelving unit, when he saw her coming; but it was too late, and she was already on him.

“Give me the contract,” Ivven demanded cooly.

“Captain...?” Jucano stammered.

“The Catla contract, _ give it to me now! _” Ivven raised her voice; through the helmet’s filters, it was harsher, and carried.

Jucano flinched, putting his palms up. “It’s out of my hands! I had someone else go after him!”

“Who?” she snapped.

“Just the muscle-”

“Call them back,” Ivven ordered.

Jucano shook his head frantically. “I can’t, I don’t know who was sent!”

“Where is he now?”

“I don’t know-”

“_Where? _” she bellowed.

Jucano practically cowered. “I don’t know, really, I don’t know anything about him! He was just a _ warehouse hand _ , he was nothing, less than _ bantha fodder! _”

She had counted on her t-visor, with its widely feared imagery, to inspire truthfulness in him, and it had worked; Ivven recognized the fear. Cowards didn’t lie.

She took off.

* * *

Ivven sprinted through the streets of the district from which the comm message had originated. Shaltho had managed to narrow down the location in the time that Ivven spent trying to pry the same information out of Jucano.

A being crossed the gap in the alleyway ahead of her at a similar tilt; a first lead, if any. Ivven tore around the corner after them, unnoticed. She could hear signs of a scuffle ahead. It could’ve been anything; people were murdered in numbers without a second thought nightly on Nar Shaddaa. She heard a shout, a single word, and her HUD identified it immediately. It was all the confirmation she needed.

Ivven took down her first target, the one she was keeping quick pace behind, by springing forward and clawing around the being’s shoulders from behind, releasing a pressured spray of gas from her gauntlet straight into his face. Target Aurek choked and pitched forward. Ivven released her hold and let him fall to the ground in a scrape, her boots impacting on his back to leap forward off of him, never pausing her forward momentum. The alleyway opened up into what could have been a small plaza, but what was really just a case of poor city planning: a wide opening where several alleyways intersected, walls on all sides--

\-- a perfect place to corner prey.

Ahead of her: two targets, with Jav pinned down in the open expanse. Jav had his hands wrapped around the nozzle of the blaster of his closest assailant, wrestling and trying to keep too close for it to be used on him; not the worst plan. Struggling to yank his blaster back from Jav, Target Besh instead brought the butt of it down hard on Jav’s temple. Jav _ oofed _ in pain from the blow, his grip failing, and he crashed to the ground, his elbows smacking and lekku scraping under him.

Thankfully, Target Besh was riled by adrenaline and not thinking straight; instead of leaving the space for his companion to finish the job with a blaster bolt, Besh piled on top and began to pummel Jav with his fists, the only noises escaping the Twi’lek after the initial protest being muted grunts and bursts of air through the force of the hits.

Still propelling forward, Ivven pulled a Q2 from its holster at her hip. A single flash of green, and Target Cresh spun out and hit the ground; there was always a chance that a glancing shot could still turn out lethal, but more than likely, she’d just incapacitated them with a targeted shot to the shoulder. She wasn’t interested in leaving bodies behind today, only warnings.

On top of Jav, Target Besh reacted, reeling back and focusing on her right as she pulled her heavy blaster from over her backside, flicking it to stun. Before he could do anything, she’d hit him square in the chest with a focused blast, and Besh dropped down onto Jav with his full weight.

One more stun blast for Cresh, for insurance, and Ivven holstered both blasters. She strode forward, grabbing the unconscious Besh and beginning to heave him off of Jav.

Suddenly, she felt large hands drop onto her shoulders, just as her helmet blared a warning to her; she felt the same sort of disappointment toward her helmet’s systems as she would have felt toward an underperforming child, that the warning did not come sooner. She swung her right arm out in a backhand, catching the errant target in the head and presumably cutting them with the sharp edges of her gauntlet-- she heard him snarl-- before thick arms encircled her neck and cut off her air supply with the pressure.

Ivven struggled, her hands clawing uselessly at the unidentified alien’s limbs. Stars erupted behind her eyes. She kicked frantically, before her mind settled and she managed to aim a wrist blindly up at where she thought the being’s face might be. She blinked a command at her HUD, and a pronged ripcord fired from its housing.

She must have hit something, because the alien roared with pain and dropped her to the ground. Ivven sucked in a rattling breath, choking on the rush of air through her damaged throat. She didn’t get much time to recover or put distance between them, before the being’s meaty hand dropped onto her unarmored upper arm and viced back down; Ivven ground out a shout.

She saw that the prongs of the ripcord had buried itself into the neck of what she finally identified as a Houk, realizing in that moment that she was lucky he hadn’t had time to crush her sternum to dust before she’d loosened his grapple on her. He was pulling her back in now, and she understood she couldn’t afford leniency with this assailant, lest she be willing to put her own life on the line.

Just as he tugged her body back in for what would be a rib-crushing and fatal hug, she brought her snub-nosed Q2 up to bear, blasting him in the neck. His head snapped back, as best it could with a neck as thick as his face, and Ivven had no choice but to accompany him on his fall backwards, his fingers still gripped around her arms. His body made a thundering noise as it hit the permacrete, echoing off the walls of the enclosed space. She impacted on his chest, hearing the wheeze of air as he released his final breath, followed by a gurgle. Everything was still, and suddenly quiet. Her breath puffed in her ears.

Her gloved fingers slicked with blood where they had landed on his chest to brace for the fall, where the Houk had bled from the spikes that had broken off her handplate to become buried in his face, a souvenir from her backhand. She made it worse when she pressed the release that allowed her to pull the barbed prong of the ripcord from the thick folds of his neck.

In her armor, she didn’t feel the effects of outside temperature. But the night seemed suddenly cold.

Ivven shakily got to her feet, still hovering half crouched over her victim, and turned her helmeted head to look over in Jav’s direction. Jav, still lying on the ground pinned underneath the unconscious Target Besh where she’d left him seconds before, finally got a clear look at her. She saw him stiffen, watched his eyes go wide and glassy, an expression she recognized as sheer, crippling terror.

“_Oh no…_” The meek sound escaped Jav’s lips. His heels scraped aimlessly on the ground as he tried and failed to get out from under the much bigger being pinning him down.

“Get up, Jav,” Ivven ordered, straightening up fully.

“Oh no, ohno, _ no, no, no _…” Jav’s chant crescendoed into a wail as Ivven approached, his uncooperative hands failing to free himself.

She placed a boot against Target Besh and rolled him off with a forceful grunt.

“Get up, there will be more coming,” she commanded, reaching down to help Jav up.

“_Nooooo! _” he screamed, a visceral, savage sounding noise, kicking wildly at her from his spot on the ground.

“_Jav! _” she shouted, startled by the sudden ferocity of his assault. She put her hands out to block him.

The bottom of his boot impacted on her unarmored thigh, causing her to stumble to the ground on one knee, and hurt well enough through her flightsuit that it caused a momentary lapse in judgement; she instinctually secured his wrists. His voice broke and he screamed again at her, kicking with abandon.

It dawned on her with a pang what was happening. In her own adrenaline-addled brain, she’d forgotten that Jav didn’t know the armored, helmeted being who was roughly demanding he come with them. She remembered why she’d started avoiding contact with him.

Jav’s family had been killed by Mandalorians. He was mentally somewhere very far away right now.

“Jav, Jav, _ it’s me! _ Stop!” She reached up with one hand and tipped her helmet off her head. Long twists of blonde hair came free and tossed around her shoulders.

Jav’s struggling lessened and gradually came to a halt as recognition dawned on his face. His mouth stood open, eyes turning to saucers. He stared up at her, tear streaks on his dirty cheeks, frozen by confusion. She stared hard back, giving him a moment to react. 

Several seconds passed, then Jav just slowly closed his mouth again. Saying nothing, he let his head fall to the side to stare off aimlessly away from her, his neck tendons tense and jumping out. Feeling him tremble slightly, she saw his wide eyes, rimmed with tears, take on a tinge of betrayal.

He wouldn’t look at her.

“We need to _ go _, Jav,” Ivven said firmly. “There could be more of them.”

Paralytically still, he didn’t make a move.

They didn’t have time for this. Ivven threw a leg over him, straddling his torso and hauling him up by his shirtfront.

He let her pull him to his feet, but still couldn’t look in her direction, his eyes cast down and to the side. Fine by her, so long as he moved. Ivven grabbed his sleeve by the shoulder and dragged him behind her as she made their escape.

Shaltho was priming the ship when they returned, as Ivven had instructed over her helmet comms on the way there. Jav still hadn’t said a word, but complacently let Ivven lead him up the entrance ramp onto the ship. Ivven pushed him down into the open chair in the cockpit and took her own seat in the copilot’s, roughly dropping her helmet on the floor near her feet.

“We’re out of here,” she told Shaltho tightly.

Shaltho nodded tersely from the pilot’s seat and began to lift off.

“Just get us off the planet,” Ivven said. “Then we can reevaluate.”

As if suddenly activated, Jav bolted for the doorway to the access hallway, going from seated to sprinting in a single instant.

But Ivven had sprung up right after him, grabbing him by his shirt, the seams making creaking and popping noises with the stress, throwing him back into the chair.

“Stop it!” she snarled. “We’re trying to help you!”

Jav panted, eyes flashing, his back having landed closer to the seat of the chair than the backrest. He made a small noise, and looked past her.

“Y-… You too, Shaltho? You’re…?” he said, winded. “You’re both…?”

“No, Jav,” Shaltho answered in Basic, perceptively filling in his question, eyes still focused on the viewport. “I’m not a Mandalorian.”

Ivven gave her head a little disbelieving shake.

“Jav, _ we’re _ not the bad guys,” she tried to explain. “It’s _ Ivven and Shaltho _ . I just _ rescued you _ from those thugs.”

“<He’s in shock>,” Shaltho muttered so only she could understand. “<Take that _ blasted _ armor off.>”

It was as harsh as Shaltho ever got with her. The nature that told the Selonian to _ mother _was clearly flaring in her, and she had very little patience for Ivven’s abrasiveness in that moment.

They exited the atmosphere. Ivven glanced down at her armor as Shaltho plotted the course for a jump point closeby, easily retraced if they decided they needed to come back. As Shaltho eased them into hyperspace, Ivven snatched her helmet from the floor and moved to exit the cockpit. Shaltho stood at the same time, crossing to Jav as he sat back up and benignly pushing his head down.

“Put your head between your knees,” she heard Shaltho instruct him gently as she left. “You’ll feel better.”

Shaltho handled this sort of thing with so much more finesse than Ivven could.

In her quarters, Ivven changed into a plain shirt and trousers. She took her time, hoping to give Shaltho a moment to handle the topics at hand. Ivven could feel her own frustration with the situation mounting; she tried to control it, but the problems of the day had compounded one thing after another, all pertaining to a past that she didn’t care to think about; not to mention the fact that she was crashing violently down from an adrenaline high, _ and _ her body was starting to ache from her scuffle with the Houk.

Jav seemed calmer, more present, when she exited her quarters off the main hold. He and Shaltho had moved to the seating rest in the corner, and glanced up at her.

“Shaltho explain things?” Ivven broached the conversation.

Jav gave a numb nod.

Ivven took a few steps closer and propped her backside against the holodisplay table in the middle of the room, crossing one ankle over the other.

“You digesting it?” she asked, sounding unintentionally gruff.

Jav didn’t respond. He just seemed very interested in a series of blinking lights on the wall. He fingered at the glass of… water? liquor?... he held in his hands. Ivven didn’t know which Shaltho would have fetched him in this situation.

“I imagine you thought I was a bounty hunter,” Ivven postulated, attempting to sound gentler, but just coming up sort of toneless. It seemed obvious now that she would have looked to him like a member of the party sent to kill him. “Apologies for the confusion.”

Jav finally met her eyes, and she saw a glint in his own.

“Confusion…?” he repeated, like he was appalled by the understatement. His lips moved a few times as though considering and rejecting several potential paths of communication.

He finally settled on glaring at her, and in a venomous tone saying, “So. You’re not an Imperial.”

“Not an Imperial,” Ivven confirmed mildly.

“You’re…” Jav trailed off breathily, as though rethinking his words. “What _ are _ you?”

“I’m a smuggler,” she replied simply.

“_Thank you _, I was hoping for a bit more detail,” he sneered, his normally animated self showing through just a little.

“That is a sufficient summation of what I do,” Ivven insisted, refusing to give a millimeter to the way his eyes shot hateful lasers in her direction. She’d never seen him look at anyone that way.

“You owe me this,” he maintained.

“I don’t owe you anything.”

“You _ lied _,” Jav spat. “The entire time I knew you!”

“I didn’t owe you a backstory, Catla.”

She was going to make him say it.

“_Ivven _ …” Jav’s tone was suddenly entreating. “You _ know _ what th-… I _ told you _ what they did to me… how can you just-”

“Just _ what _ , Jav? Spit it out,” Ivven demanded, finally letting her temper flare and get the better of her. Every word hurt her damaged windpipe. “I’m not about to apologize to you for being what you don’t want me to be. You don’t know anything about the Mandalorians, _ anything _ , and you don’t know anything about me,” she snarled. “All I’ll give you-- _ all _ , I’ll give you-- is that I haven’t been in contact with the core Mandalorians for years and years.” Then, for good measure, with a stab of her finger in his direction, added, “And _ don’t _ go speculating yourself into a corner about what that means.”

Jav’s ochre skin was starting to look pale again.

“And what did you manage to do, to get your boss mad enough at you to have you whacked?” she burst, throwing her arms out once and letting them smack back down at her sides, incredulous.

Rethinking the sudden outburst, she pinched the bridge of her nose between the fingertips of her hands and squeezed her eyes shut, forcing out a steadying breath into her palms before reemerging from behind them.

“Get some rest,” Ivven told him, and it sounded like an order. She pushed off the console. “Shaltho can show you to the crew quarters. We’re putting some distance between us and Nar Shaddaa. We can figure out what to do next when you aren’t liable to keel over.”

“I should have listened when you told me to not get mixed up with you,” Jav muttered listlessly at her back as she made for the cockpit.

Taking the bait, she snapped, “Yeah, you should’ve.”

After some time, Shaltho again joined her. Ivven sat in the copilot’s seat, staring out the viewport with a surly look on her face, massaging her own neck and shoulders. She waited to hear it.

But instead, Shaltho just said, “<Good job, by the way. He may not realize it yet, but he owes you his life.>”

Ivven wasn’t sure how she felt about that. Instead of responding, she brought up the smuggling channels, and began to scroll through.


	3. Chapter Three

THE SANCTUARY SWAN, SPACE

“<They’re not here.>”

Shaltho continued to scan, but her statement hung in the air. Ivven leaned forward in the copilot’s chair and propped her chin on the palm of her hand, tapping absent-mindedly at the little tattoo there with her pointer finger.

“<They’re not here>,” Shaltho said again with more finality, sitting back.

Ivven inhaled and exhaled once. The Rebels were a notoriously jumpy bunch, but they’d taken the precautions expected of them. They were _ supposed _to meet their contact at these coordinates to trade off the cargo in space, but as Shaltho had observed, the Rebels weren’t where they said they’d be.

Ivven immediately began to run through their options. The weapons would be easy to offload, but the majority of the products were foodstuffs and the like; things the poor and disenfranchised would benefit from, but that no one could really pay desperate prices for. The only people who could get any great use out of something like that, and afford to pay her prices for it, were organized, well-funded people on the run. People like the Rebels.

“<But they _ were _ here>,” Shaltho said, suddenly perking up. “<I’m picking up residual ship trails on the sensor.>”

“Think you can trace them?” Ivven queried.

“<Just might…>” Shaltho mumbled, working. “<It appears they left in a hurry; didn’t take all the safety measures they could have.>”

“Must have been something pretty important to mess up like that,” Ivven pondered. “Not sure they’d appreciate us following them home.”

“<Lucky us>,” Shaltho said. “<Looks like there’s only one jump they could have made, unless they made it blind.>”

“The way they rushed out of here…”

“<Worth a shot.>”

They made the jump.

* * *

Jav froze, an uncomfortable wave of heat flushing through him, when he heard a whine pick up in the walls of the ship, felt the floor begin to vibrate at a high frequency. There was another noise, then a lurch, and the sounds of the ship evened out again. His heart pounded in his throat. His breath returned to him as he began to sort out the unfamiliar sensations.

_ We probably just jumped to hyperspace _, he thought to himself.

It was all very new.

He pulled the blanket tighter around his shoulders, knees up to his chest where he sat on the cot in one of the alcoves in the port crew quarters. He’d been on a ship, been in space, only one other time in his life, as a nine year old stowing away to Nar Shaddaa; that was fourteen years ago now, and the memory had faded. He didn’t remember it being this concerning of an experience, didn’t recall worrying that the deck was going to drop out from under him at any second and suck him out into the void. Perhaps he had less to fear back then; his parents had been freshly murdered, he was starving, and the promise of opportunity on a giant city planet had stirred bravery in him, or at least abandon.

Now he felt like he was back there, on New Bornalex, staring into the T-visors of the creatures that killed his parents.

He was too afraid to leave the crew quarters. He’d only done so a few times, to use the ‘fresher, in the few days since he’d come aboard the ship. He hadn’t needed to much; he found it difficult to eat or drink what Shaltho brought to him, despite her gentle urgings that he needed to.

_ “I can’t take you back to Nar Shaddaa,” _ Ivven had said. _ “There’s a price on your head. You have to let it die down.” _

_ “It wouldn’t be the first time I’ve had to hide from people on that planet,” _Jav had argued.

_ “Fine; but you’re on this ship until we make our scheduled drop. I’m not going to miss a delivery because you have a death wish.” _

They hadn’t spoken again since; that had been three days ago. Logically, he understood this wasn’t captivity. He knew these people. Shaltho and Ivven had never been anything but kind to him in the past, and they were probably right: he had nowhere to go right now. He was free to roam about the ship, but chose not to, afraid to run into the armored form that had taken him here. He’d become paranoid again.

He was having trouble reconciling who he knew these people to be. It didn’t make any sense. Ivven was a common smuggler. Or so he’d thought.

The shirt he now wore was hers, something oversized so it fit, though he wasn’t that much larger than her. His own shirt was torn and bloody, destroyed by the beating he’d taken from Jucano’s men. He didn’t have any of his belongings with him, just the boots and trousers he wore, not that he’d had much to his name to leave behind. He couldn’t even afford a blaster. In fact, it was what he had _ intended _ to buy with the credits he made selling off one of Jucano’s shipments to a rival, the situation that had instead landed him in this mess.

He felt another uncomfortable lurch, and the ship again felt different. That was three shifts now in a short amount of time. Something was going on. He mustered the courage to get off the bed, and cautiously wandered towards the cockpit.

* * *

They dropped out of hyperspace.

The swear that left Shaltho’s mouth didn’t translate to Basic. Ivven stood up in her seat and braced her hands on the control panel to look out the viewport.

There was a Star Destroyer looming in the distance over the planet.

This complicated things immensely.

“<Looks like we’re not the only ones paying a visit to the Rebels today>,” Shaltho deadpanned.

“I do hate when people invite themselves to a party,” Ivven agreed.

Jav’s curiosity must have been piqued by their entry and subsequently quick exit from hyperspace, because he wandered into the cockpit to see what it was about. He’d only been with them for about four days so far, and Ivven frequently forgot he was on the ship; he’d spent most of his time holed up in the crew quarters where they had set him up, avoiding them.

He certainly wasn’t acting himself.

“What’s going on?” Jav asked. His eyes widened when he saw the Star Destroyer, and he took a half step back. “_ Kriff _, what did you do?”

“Nothing yet,” Ivven just replied. She looked over at Shaltho and with a jerk of her head said, “You got the Rebels pinpointed on the planet’s surface?”

“<Yes>,” Shaltho responded, still eyeing the Destroyer.

“Well, let’s do this real quick-like, then,” Ivven decided, pushing herself off the console.

“Hold on,” Jav interrupted, alarmed. “You’re not seriously considering going _ down _ there right now?”

“They’ll disappear off the galaxy map after a raid like this. If we don’t deliver these supplies today, we’ll lose the cell,” Ivven explained matter-of-factly. Then, as a pragmatic afterthought, she added, “Plus, they could all be captured, and the cell could go defunct. No, we have to make the delivery _ now. _”

“Ivven,” Jav appealed, “we can _ not _ land and get involved in this; these are _ Imperials _ we’re talking about! They’ll firebomb the whole place if they want!”

“Naw, they’ve got a sweet little setup down there,” Ivven mumbled distractedly, punching keys on the console in front of her. “Air defense shields. They’ll have to storm it the old-fashioned way: with stormtroopers.”

“No, Shaltho, tell her she’s crazy!” Jav pleaded.

“We can’t make the profit benefits of ‘high-risk smuggling’ without the ‘risk’ part,” Shaltho said with a shrug. “Sorry, Jav.”

“I didn’t agree to this!” Jav shouted, grabbing the back of Ivven’s chair. “You _ kidnapped _ me!”

“_Please _ , I saved your _ life _,” Ivven corrected.

“So you could get me killed in a Rebel operation?” he bleated.

“All this panicking is bad for morale,” Ivven ribbed dismissively, pushing past him and heading down the hallway towards the main hold.

“Where are you going?” Jav demanded, chasing after her and standing in the doorway that separated the cockpit access hallway from the main hold.

Ivven crossed to the opposite side where her quarters opened up, and pulled her Mandalorian armor out of the corner where it was resting.

“Suiting up,” she replied.

Jav turned pallid when he saw it. He put out a hand. “Don’t put that on,” he practically gulped.

“Could get dangerous groundside,” she simply reasoned, digging in the pack.

“Yeah, and the rest of us?” Jav demanded. “We’ll be just fine without it?”

“Stay on the ship if you’re scared.”

Jav’s fists balled tightly at his sides.

“Do you even _ realize _ the swathe of pain and destruction your kind leaves behind wherever they go?” he blurted wildly. “You can’t just make these decisions for me!”

“I don’t exactly have time to drop you out somewhere,” Ivven clipped in a low tone, holding up her flightsuit in front of her eyes for a moment of mental inventory.

When she moved the fabric, it revealed her helmet underneath, sitting flatly on the floor, and she saw the flash in Jav’s eyes.

“_You’re all animals! _” he bellowed at her.

It had been many, many years since Ivven had felt any kinship with the Mandalorians, but his words still stung. She had not anticipated that.

Ivven slowly turned back around, eyes drilling and nostrils flared. Jav faced her down, breathing heavily.

“Don’t you _ ever _ shame me for where I came from,” Ivven snarled. “You’d do well to remember this is _ my _ ship, and you’re only on it by my goodwill.”

“Go ahead,” Jav challenged, fury simmering under the surface. “Prove me right.”

She took a large, sudden step forward, and stopped. Jav flinched, but to his benefit, his feet stayed planted where they were. He looked very young then-- he _ was _ very young- _ \- _ trying to square up with that scrawny frame of his, his youthful, defiant features betraying his fear.

“I don’t have to prove myself to anyone,” she hissed. “_Ever _. Clear?”

He matched her stare for a few tense moments. Then, without another word, he just darkly exited the room, back towards the crew quarters.

“You know, I should thank you!” Ivven shouted after him. It was against her better judgment, but she was fuming. “You bring out the _ patriot in me! _”

He rounded the corner and disappeared.

She scoffed angrily, then began pulling off her boots, stripping down to her undergarments where she stood-- it was still her ship-- and shimmied into her armor.

“<That wasn’t quite helpful>,” Shaltho chastised gently, disapprovingly, when Ivven returned to the cockpit. So she’d overheard. “<You’ve got him running scared.>”

“Not my fault he has hold ups,” Ivven grumbled, dropping back into her seat. She didn’t need to subject herself to Jav’s vitriol when her body was still stiff from taking on the giant Houk sent to kill him. _ That ungrateful- _

“Ivven,” Shaltho chided lowly.

“Take us down fast as you can,” Ivven requested, ignoring it. “We have to beat their landing shuttles. And please remember to warn the Rebels who we are so they don’t try to blast us out of the sky."

“<We’re not going to beat those landing shuttles...>” Shaltho just murmured, angling the ship towards the planet.

* * *

Ivven paused, her hand hovering over her helmet. At the last second, she decided against it, and instead reached up beside it to snag the poncho that hung against the wall, throwing it over her torso and obscuring much of the fact that she was armored.

_ Could startle the Rebels _ , she told herself. _ No other reason. _

Ivven stepped down the ramp of her ship to the ground, and into a flurry of panicked motion. The Rebels were in full evacuation mode. Ivven didn’t waste time, and swiftly marched up to meet the man storming toward her; she was surprised and annoyed when Jav appeared at her elbow.

“Who-in-the-hell are you, and what are you doing landing at a time like this?” the man demanded, arms gesturing in displeasure.

“I’m your smuggler,” Ivven replied bluntly. She jerked a thumb back toward the _ Swan _. “I’ve got the supplies you wanted; was hoping to offload them and pick up my fee. Or are you running out on me?”

The man looked at her as though she had just grown a second head. “_ Now? _ In the middle of an evacuation?” He shook his head incredulously. “You mercenary types are insane,” he muttered dismissively, catching a passing Rebel in a low-ranking uniform and barking an order.

“That’s what I said!” Jav exclaimed.

“I’m not the one fighting an Empire,” Ivven just retorted patiently, recapturing the man’s attention as he pushed past her. She followed in pursuit.

“I don’t have time to offload your cargo!” the man shouted. “We’ll be swimming in stormtroopers any minute! You want to get paid, pick up a blaster and get ready for a fight. You’re _ in it _, now.””

He stopped to help a scraggy-looking kid heft a cargo crate to sit atop another, building makeshift barriers.

“I expect extra for heroics,” Ivven bartered levelly, unperturbed.

“We live, and maybe you’ll get it,” the man quipped, unconvinced.

“Maybe we should just leave,” Jav protested nervously. “Come on, Ivven.” He tried to grab her elbow, but she shook him off, not looking away.

“They’ll shoot you out of the sky if you try to leave now,” the Rebel just stated. “You’re stuck here until we fire the ion cannon, and we’re not doing that until we’re all ready to scramble. Hope you’re happy with your decision.”

It was an… annoying situation. The man jogged away, chasing a carrier. She let him go.

“I have a bad feeling about this,” Jav murmured.

“Yes, let me defer to a coward’s judgment,” Ivven retorted with a roll of her eyes. She finally looked at him, before making for the _ Swan _. “You seem to handle crises so well.”

“I handle crises just _ fine _,” Jav defended, chasing after her. “I just have the common sense to-”

Ivven stopped and spun around to address him; he nearly crashed into her, for the suddenness of it.

“What are you doing out here, Catla?” she demanded. “Get back on the ship if you’re just going to critique my work. As much as you may hate it, you’re stuck with us right now. When we get out of this--_ when_,” she punctuated with a pointed finger, “--I’ll take you anywhere in the galaxy you want, and leave you there. You don’t ever have to hear from me again. Tell me what you want, where you want to go, and Shaltho and I will take you there. But right now, we’re _ here _ , so stop following me around like a lost Salky, get on the ship, and _ be quiet_.”

He stood there blinking widely at her, silenced by her words as if registering them for the first time. She decided to push her advantage.

“You need a reason to help out right now?” she continued, throwing an arm out to her side to gesture at the chaos around them, Jav’s head bobbing back to avoid the wide movement. “These people aren’t thinking straight. Right now, all they’re thinking about is surviving the next hour. You know what we’re delivering? Foodstuffs. Medical supplies. Clothing.” She ticked them off on her gloved fingers. “Things these people are going to need wherever they end up after this. _ They _ are panicking. But I’m not. And I am getting them their supplies.”

She could see in the way his expression untightened that her appeal had finally reached something in him.

She looked at him then, _ really _ looked, and was surprised by her own tunnel vision. She finally noticed the bruises still left on his face from the beating he’d taken from Jucano’s grunts, the angry purple-and-red contusions mixing with his natural blue-and-rust mottling. He had one black eye that butterflied up and around to his brow bone, and he seemed to be keeping one arm pinned slightly to his side, as though cradling bruised ribs. He looked kicked, but there was a grit back in his eyes that she hadn’t seen since this whole ordeal started.

She felt suddenly uncomfortable. She played it off as idly looking him up and down in disapproval.

“And get a blaster on you!” she exclaimed exasperatedly, pulling her holdout from its holster and shoving it sideways against his chest. “Don’t you feel naked?”

She spun back around before he could respond. Shaltho stood expectantly at the bottom of the _ Swan’s _ cargo ramp when she reached it.

“Start prepping to offload the cargo,” Ivven told her. “I’m going to convince them to let us move it to one of their ships.”

Shaltho nodded tersely and disappeared back into the hold.

Ivven caught up with the Rebel leader again, cutting through the scrambling.

“You _ don’t _ want to leave without this cargo,” Ivven struck up without pretense. Her tone snagged his attention. “You’ll need exactly what I have in my ship wherever you group up again.”

“So follow us there,” he dismissed flippantly.

“You won’t let me, and I know it,” Ivven snapped. “Now, I’m prepared to move this product. Move one of your ships over to mine, and we’ll make the transfer. You _ need _ these supplies.”

The man looked exasperated at first, then frustrated, then defeated. He pointed at two Rebels.

“You!” he ordered. “Get a loader to her ship and get that cargo on the _ Lenerian _!”

“Got it!” one responded, both springing to action.

The man addressed her one last time, digging into his jacket pockets and producing the credits Ivven sought.

“You won’t be pulling a stunt like this for us again,” he warned, dropping them into her hand.

“You won’t remember my name,” she disagreed, slipping them into the pouches of her gear belt.

Miraculously, Jav was waiting at the bottom of the cargo ramp when she got back to the _ Swan _, helping to get the crates of cargo situated on the loader.

“The sooner we can get out of here, the better,” he gruffed as the excuse for his change of heart.

* * *

Jav had never actually seen Ivven’s freighter, the _ Sanctuary Swan, _before now; except it didn’t look much like a freighter outside at all.

It looked more like a personal transport ship, with two long wings extending out straight to either side from the space between the two offset, flatish ovals that made up the body of the ship. The backward oval staggered a step lower than the forward oval that housed the viewport and main hold. A dull silver color with visible seams for various access panels, the hull was well-worn with carbon scoring from space travel-- and likely disguised skirmishes, as well-- but scrubbed and clearly upkept. Worn-down paint in abutted running stripes of magenta, cyan, and pale yellow traveled the curves of the ship, dipping and turning to follow the shape of the structure. All-in-all it had the sort of practical charm with just a bit of flare of something clearly well-admired by its owner.

Jav took it all in in the span of seconds, attention quickly recentered on the unlikely situation he found himself in: about to be participant on the wrong side of an Imperial raid, very far from Nar Shaddaa.

But he’d done it: his heart pounded in his throat, but he’d faced her down and come out unscathed. Ivven seemed suddenly less intimidating, all for finding his voice again. She was the same greedy smuggler he’d always known, with the same shortsightedness he’d seen time and time again in his exchanges with Jucano’s various clients and contractors. He could work with that. 

An anti-air canon took out one of the Imperial shuttles as it made a flyby, and Jav ducked under the _ Swan _ to avoid the shower of hot metal scraps that escaped the frame, watching in stunned disbelief as the flaming wreckage streaked overhead to crash somewhere outside the base. It was the wave of heat that blew past that shocked him the most, catching him hard enough to make his eyes flutter closed in discomfort.

Jav blinked several times before shaking himself back to the task at hand. If there was no room for argument, and they weren’t going to leave until this cargo was moved, Jav would do what he knew well: moving boxes around for people richer than him.

The repulsor controls of the cargo crates reacted to his touch, the hum aggravatingly familiar. Shaltho helped to arrange the crates near the bottom of the ramp, while Jav moved them to the adjacent ship, their movements surprisingly in sync for two beings who weren’t necessarily on steady terms, and who had never worked together before. Jav kept his head down and focused, tuning out the mayhem. It didn’t have to be any different than that time they had to break down the stock at Jucano’s original warehouse all while Tegriss’s men raided the place.

The noise of the skirmish had grown louder, and Jav could hear the sound of blaster fire now faintly through all the shouting and the whining of primed ship engines. When Ivven returned with her blaster still drawn, she smelled like it had been used.

“How many more?” she asked, loud enough for her voice to carry over the noise.

“These are the last four!” Jav said, helping Shaltho to lash them together.

“Do it fast and get on the ship!” Ivven shouted, running up the ramp to presumably prime their own.

Jav nodded at Shaltho, sensing the sudden urgency and feeling his heart beat in his ears. They got behind the loader and pushed, but the cargo bay door of the Rebel ship was already lifting from the ground to close. The assisting Rebel waved their arms back and forth in front of their head in a crossing motion.

“_No more! _” they shouted, the blast of the engines drowning out the noise and leaving only the shapes their mouth formed to communicate the words, before they ran off to get to their own shuttle.

“Come on!” Shaltho shouted to Jav, tugging the loader back in the opposite direction towards the _ Swan _’s cargo bay.

Jav followed, flinching as he was buffeted by the nearby ship lifting off. He pulled the loader up the cargo ramp, and Shaltho ran to the opposite side of the bay to close the doors. After half a second of slightly stunned silence, Jav rushed to follow her up the ladder to the mezzanine level and through the stairway to the main hold. It was startlingly quiet compared to outside; Jav’s ears rung.

“Come on!” Shaltho called again, gesturing for him to follow her to the cockpit.

Dazed, he complied, following at a much more sluggish pace. The floor jerked under him just as he made to through the access hallway, and he caught himself on the frame with a startled noise. He hurried to secure himself into the extra seat located behind Ivven’s while she began their lift off. Shaltho pressed a quick succession of buttons over her head, then grasped the controls in front of her. There were several bright flashes from outside the viewport, but as he felt the ship lift from the ground and the scenery dipped and rotated, he grew disoriented trying to focus on what was going on, and instead gritted his teeth against the uncomfortable sensations and gripped the crash webbing across his shoulders firmly; he noted Ivven and Shaltho’s lay uselessly to the sides of their chairs.

“You got it?” Ivven clipped.

Shaltho graveled a short response in a language Jav didn’t understand.

“You focus on that, I’ve got coordinates,” Ivven said in a rush. She let go of her own set of controls and stood, overextending to reach a console on the wall beside her. She tapped frantically on the keys there while they broke cloud cover and the atmosphere gradually turned to inky black and stars. Jav’s shoulders ached with anxiety.

“Watch it,” Ivven warned lowly, firmly, and Shaltho chittered a response as Jav felt them change course.

“Ready,” Ivven barked, dropping back into her chair.

Shaltho reached up to the series of levers on the console in the center paneling above their heads, and pushed them towards the viewport. Jav’s eyes widened, and he pressed himself harder into the backrest as the stars stretched into streaks, then dissolved into swirling blue light.

Ivven let out a puff of breath, a single loud noise in a release of tension. Jav’s own breath rattled, as though he couldn’t catch it. Ivven twisted around in her chair to look back at him, her lips parted slightly, as if remembering they had a third passenger. Jav stared back at her. She turned back around, and he looked over at Shaltho. He was afraid to ask.

“Are we…? Is it over?” he hazarded.

Ivven pulled herself out of her chair, looking at him again.

“Yeah,” she said, sounding weary. “We just made the jump.”

Without another word, she walked past him and into the access hallway. Shaltho was running a series of diagnostics on various scopes and statuses. After a few minutes of that, she seemed satisfied that everything was in order, and similarly got up and moved for the main hold. She gave a small gesture that implied he should accompany her. Without much of an alternative option, Jav stirred from his stupor and slipped out of the restraints over his shoulders to follow her down the hallway.

Ivven had stretched out on the seating rest in the corner, feet at one end and head at the other, so that he couldn’t see her face so much as the top of her head, having stripped down to just a utilitarian-looking khaki jumpsuit with orange-colored detailings. Shaltho stood off to the side, and Jav hovered in the doorway, feeling a bit stunned by everything that had just happened. The almost placid atmosphere of the hold, when they were just minutes before running-and-gunning from Imperials and Imperial Star Destroyers alike, clashed discordantly in his head, the vigilant energy and fear still trapped in his chest.

“So… that’s it?” he finally croaked.

Ivven turned her neck to look up and back at him, then sat up, placing her feet flat on the floor and bracing either forearm on her thighs.

“That’s it,” she confirmed.

At a loss for how to react to this situation, he probed, “What’s next?”

“Back to Nar Shaddaa, I guess.”

Jav let out a noise, the single syllable more a cross between a scoff and a nervous laugh. “No, I mean… how do you just—… we were _ just _being shot at by Imperials and now you’re… napping?” he asked incredulously.

Ivven paused for half a second, as if not really following. A bit hesitantly, she explained, “...once you jump to hyperspace, there’s nothing left to do. The Imperials aren’t going to follow us. The mission is over.”

How she could just be so… _ casual _about the insane situation they’d just survived absolutely baffled him; meanwhile, he couldn’t even get his heart rate to return to normal.

“Most days… aren’t like this,” Shaltho admitted from the corner, a bit more emotionally aware than Ivven. “This was… a lot.”

They all sat or stood there rather dumbly for a moment.

“Alright,” Ivven announced, ending the silence. “Like I promised. Shaltho and I will take you anywhere you want. Where do you want to go?”

He’d almost forgotten. The question filled Jav with a sinking feeling that confused him. He didn’t know what to do next. So much had changed in the whirlwind of days previous, and he felt a bit like nothing could ever be the same after this. There was no returning to Nar Shaddaa and picking up where he left off; he’d burned that bridge. It was slowly sinking in that he didn’t have anywhere to go.

Ivven sensed his hesitation, because she added, with what he perceived as forced nonchalance, “We’re in no rush. You can stay on the ship, if you want.”

Ivven was a Mandalorian. Or _ was _ a Mandalorian. He didn’t quite understand that situation, but he also knew that she was an accomplished smuggler and a scoundrel that he’d drank and laughed with at one point in his life. Shaltho, mild-mannered and unplaceable, had quietly and patiently cared for him these last few days, to his barest reaction, bringing him food and making sure he had bacta salve for his scrapes. Jav didn’t really have anyone on Nar Shaddaa, not for years now. He’d turned to Ivven in his time of need. Ivven, who he’d barely known before, and knew even less about now.

He thought about it for a moment.

“I’ve never been anywhere else… I want to go home,” he finally said.

* * *

NEW BORNALEX

It seemed a planet made for leaving. Deserts and mountains and not a lot else, New Bornalex was a far cry from the Smugglers’ Moon.

They landed the ship on a dry, dusty outcropping with gently swaying patches of grass. The crumbled remnants of old ferrocrete structures that had clearly been leveled and pulled away for scrap and repurposing littered the ground, the rocky foundations all that remained of the small community that had once been there.

Jav worked his way quietly, ponderously across the deserted mesa, eyes fixed on the ground, as if to find a souvenir, a sign, anything that would have helped to situate himself to the layout that used to be his home; but there was nothing left. Ivven stood in the cockpit of the _ Swan _ and watched him out the viewport, a hollow, gnawing, familiar sensation in her gut.

He reached the edge of the precipice and stood there motionlessly, seeming to stare out at nothing in particular. When he didn’t move for a long time, Ivven finally left the ship.

She stopped a couple meters behind him, waiting. He didn’t immediately give any acknowledgement that he sensed her presence, but eventually, he started speaking.

“I think I told you… that Mandalorians killed my parents in front of me, when I was a kid,” Jav said in a detached, forlorn sort of way, looking very small and vulnerable standing there in the dirt and stubby dry grass being blown around by the wind. “I don’t think I told you the part where they… _ kidnapped _me, and held me hostage for a month after that. Pulled me out of my hiding spot, and just took me.”

He still wasn’t looking at her, but Ivven slowly squeezed her eyes shut, like absorbing a blow. _ No… _

Jav laughed, a single, flat, unhumorous syllable. “They… _ tried _to say that I was one of them now. Tried to tell me they’d be the ones raising me from then on, like I was an orphan who needed parents. Like they weren’t the reason that was the case.”

Ivven’s breath left her in a tight exhale when she reopened her eyes, staring at the dirt forming a dust covering on his boots.

“I wasn’t with them long,” he continued, a bit toneless. “I escaped after a few weeks. They never found me. And eventually they left; off to fight in another war, on another planet that wasn’t theirs.”

As cautiously and as delicately as she could, Ivven tried to explain. “Mandalorians… _ adopt, _ orphans of war. It’s part of their code. It’s meant to be an act of service, a social responsibility, a _ positive _ thing.”

Ivven raised her gaze and met his eyes, finally staring back at her. His held a mixture of appall and disdain. She didn’t blame him.

“What happened to you is a perversion,” she clarified. “I’m not trying to excuse it. I can’t make it right.”

She’d researched the skirmish that was the likely culprit, before they’d come here.

“That was the Death Watch who killed your family. An extremist group of Mandalorians. They betray the core tenants of what it is to be a Mandalorian.” She hesitated, then added cryptically, vulnerably, “They’ve hurt me, too.” A beat went by. “The Mandalorians are scattered, rulerless. Most now ignore the moral code. It’s left them splintered, and rife with corruption. Most are little more than Imperial servants now, or petty criminals.”

She felt some fresh shame in that admission. Her words felt hollow to her, like empty justifications meant to mitigate her association. The galaxy wouldn’t know the difference.

Jav was digesting her words, staring off into the distance again, but she could tell in the corners of his tired eyes that it wasn’t a discussion he was ready to have… or argue about right now.

“How’d you end up on Nar Shaddaa?” she asked him suddenly, as much an existential question as a literal one. “You don’t have the stomach for it.”

Jav shrugged, an exasperated rise and fall of his shoulders, seeming almost relieved to shelve the previous topic.

“I was a naïve little kid when I took a flight there,” he said, almost self-justifyingly. “I had no idea what it’d be like… there was a lot of menial labor. Slinging food, cleaning things, moving things, shoveling things, doing _ anything _ for credits… _ anything _ .” His eyes said it all. “You’re just sort of always on the edge; but it was better than home. More people on Nar Shaddaa, always _ someone _ to work for. Working for the smuggling rings… it was more glamorous than refuse diving. Less humiliating than dancing. More credits involved. But I got in over my head.”

Ivven didn’t reply right away. “You may have seen how the game worked… but you’re not cutthroat enough to play two sides, Catla.”

“Yeah, I always knew there was an expiration date on that lifestyle,” he muttered, kicking a loose pebble of ferrocrete towards the precipice. “Didn’t mean I had a choice. Besides, it’s not like I did a whole lot, I just sold a bit of information to one of Jucano’s rivals, who, by the way, Jucano once had us working moving stock out of a _ burning warehouse _ because of their little dispute. He probably barely felt the credits he lost.”

He was quiet for a while.

“You know, coming back here, I thought I would feel either safe, or terrified,” he reflected, tipping his head back. “Like either coming home, or returning to a warzone. But I feel nothing. I’m just numb.”

“Good way to be,” Ivven offered. “You can think clearly.”

“Maybe,” Jav disagreed. He turned to face her fully, drawing himself up.

“I don’t think there’s anything for me here,” he said, a light striking behind his eyes. “You mentioned I could… stay on your ship.” He backtracked suddenly. “Well, I mean, I know how to fix things, and I’m a good worker. I could join your crew! I mean, that is, if…”

Ivven nodded once, assuaging his anxiety. “You’re welcome to stay if you like,” she said mildly. “Shaltho has already given the go-ahead. You’ll have to pull your weight, though. Learn some things.”

Jav looked visibly relieved, his shoulders going a bit slack, as though he’d been bracing himself.

“I owe you,” he said, his breath leaving him in a puff.

“Never offer a debt,” Ivven just replied, holding up a finger. “First lesson.”


	4. Chapter Four

_ 4.917 BBY _

THE SANCTUARY SWAN, SPACE, SOMEWHERE ABOVE YAGA MINOR

Ivven watched Jav from her place on the seating rest, where he sat on the floor leaned over the low table surface that split the distance between them, twisting small metal pieces from a framework sheet and sorting them into compartments of a box. Several of the pieces were soldered together already, sitting out on the surface.

Jav did just about anything to keep his hands busy; the ship could be an exceptionally boring place for someone used to the sprawl of a city. This time, the activity was constructing a model of a Z-95 Headhunter. It was an almost childish activity. Simplistic. Quiet. Focused. One of the softer moments Ivven had witnessed in some time.

As he integrated into life on the _ Swan _, Jav’s personality-- the one Ivven had known before all of this happened-- gradually re-emerged. The taboo subject of her Mandalorian heritage faded into the background compared to the everyday minutiae of running smuggling operations. It hovered, an ever-present issue, but if they didn’t talk about it-- there usually wasn’t a reason to-- they could live together with it. And Ivven didn’t like talking, anyway.

Jav continued to twist the pieces apart, dropping them into the box. He scrubbed the back of a knuckle against the cranial ridge that formed his browline, his eyes focused down at the items in his hands. Finally, he glanced up.

“Something wrong?” Jav asked her. “You’re staring.”

It shook her from her thoughts. Ivven leaned forward, unfolding her legs out from under her to set her feet on the floor, and placing the datapad in her hand down onto the table.

“No,” she stated, offering no explanation.

But Jav was instead distracted by the holodisplay of the datapad she had just set at his eye level. He blinked several times before asking, as though he didn’t believe it, “Is that… the HoloNet…?”

“It is,” Ivven confirmed slowly.

“You’re telling me,” Jav began, “that I have been on this ship for a standard month, and you never told me that we have an illegal tap into the HoloNet?”

Before Jav could further berate her for failing to enlighten him to the amenities of the _ Swan _, Shaltho’s voice floated over the intercom.

“_Ivven, <you might want to come up here>, _ ” she prefaced. “<_Interesting business proposition.> _”

Ivven’s brow knit together slightly and she got up, entering the cockpit from the connecting access hallway. Jav followed on her heel.

“Isasha referred this along,” Shaltho said. “Said we were close by and could maybe pick up the contract.” She leaned over the center console to open the comm channel again. “Want to start from the beginning?” Shaltho spoke into the comm. “My partner has arrived.”

“_I have what may be an odd request_,” a man’s voice began, and Ivven could practically picture the hand-wringing.

“We specialize in the unconventional,” Ivven just assured the man, sitting down at her place in copilot’s seat and abscently watching the traffic control of ships filtering in between the orbital docking structures out the viewport; Jav had gazed at the shipyards in utter awe when they’d first arrived here.

“_You’re not the first person I’ll have hired to do this job_,” the voice fretted.

“You’ll have to explain,” Ivven told him.

There was a beat of hesitation, then, _ “I had previously hired someone to transport a shipment for me, perfectly legitimate cargo, but was contacted by the captain of the freighter not long ago that he had been attacked by pirates while in transit, not far from where you are now, your business partner tells me. It’s been silent ever since. No updates. I don’t know what happened._”

“So, you want us to confirm that the freighter has been lost?” Ivven prompted him.

The man hesitated again. “_Well, yes, and… well I was hoping that if any cargo is salvageable...? _”

Ivven blinked. “You think pirates will have left something behind?”

“_I know it’s a long shot. But if you could find the freighter, and if the cargo is still there… you could finish the route? Back here to Yaga Minor? _”

“What about the pilot?” Ivven asked.

“_Oh, yes, of course, if they have survived! If they need help… you could provide it? _”

A rescue mission wasn’t exactly Ivven’s idea of a clean job.

“I can see why you’re hesitant to ask,” Ivven said, leaning back, letting a sigh creep into her voice. “This sounds awfully like a setup.”

Jav watched the exchange with fascination.

“_This is why I worry it may be a lost cause, _ ” the man admitted dejectedly. _ “I don’t honestly expect anyone to believe my story._”

“I didn’t say I wouldn’t take the job,” Ivven corrected them. “I’m just warning you that we are suitably suspicious and proceeding with caution. Send us the coordinates of your last communication with the freighter pilot. And know there’s an upcharge for salvage operations.”

“_Oh! Uhh... _ ” the man responded, convincingly surprised. _ “Sending the coordinates now. Yes, of course, I will pay any fee required.” _

“We’ll be on our way, then,” Ivven said, and cut the comm.

“He seemed eager,” Shaltho observed apprehensively.

“Mm,” Ivven grunted a response.

“We’re not near a jump point, but we can make it to these coordinates in a few standard hours,” Shaltho calculated.

“What’s the cargo?” Jav asked.

“Nothing illicit,” Shaltho said, pulling up the data the man had sent over. “Just expensive, hard-to-replace equipment.”

Ivven scooted down in her chair, getting comfortable. She wasn’t leaving the cockpit for even a minute after such an odd request.

* * *

“<Got something on the scanners>,” Shaltho announced. “<It’s more than scrap, I can say that much.>”

Ivven sat forward, peering out into space, her eyes flicking back and forth. Several minutes passed before anything could be spotted with the naked eye.

“<There. In the distance>,” Shaltho pointed. 

There, a tiny, unassuming dark spot blotted out the stars behind it.

It took another minute or so to get close enough to survey the damage.

“<Looks like the majority of the ship is left; cockpit’s suffered hull breaches, though>,” Shaltho inventoried. “<That probably answers the question about the pilot.>”

The derelict rotated slowly, ominously, before them.

“Suppose we’ll have to board it,” Ivven concluded. “Check for remains. Confirm the cargo’s stolen. I didn’t think I’d be crossing the vacuum today, but it’s never dull, is it?”

“<It’s _ often _ dull>,” Shaltho countered.

Something caught Ivven’s eye.

“There are two ships!” she shouted a warning only a second before the hidden aggressor began to fire, revealing itself from behind the crippled freighter; the shots zipped past the viewport.

Shaltho chattered, slamming back on the controls.

“<Why didn’t they show up on the scanner?>” she barked.

Ivven’s targeting headset dropped down from the ceiling and she tugged it into place.

“What’s going on?” Jav’s voice cut in, having rushed to the cockpit, alerted by the disturbance.

“We sprung a trap,” Ivven ground out, grabbing the firing controls. “Keep your distance, Shaltho.”

She traded fire, but still the pirate ship hung behind the decoy. She aimed to take the freighter out, and deprive them of their cover.

“Hold on!” Jav exclaimed suddenly, lurching forward to grab the back of her chair. “Look! It’s drifting.”

“Well, I’ll be Kesseled…” Shaltho murmured. “He’s right.”

He _ was _ right. _ Both _ ships were drifting, the pirate vessel _ and _ the freighter.

“That ship is dead in space!” Shaltho exclaimed. “It’s signal must have mixed with the freighter’s. Two dead hunks of metal.”

Ivven laughed once. “That trader had teeth,” she commended, leaning away from her controls. “Too bad it wasn’t enough.” She attempted to hail the damaged pirate ship. “This story’s just barely holding together. Keep hanging back out of their firing range.”

“Greetings, unidentified assault freighter,” she spoke into the comm. “Looks like your target had more firepower than you expected. Engine trouble? I’m wondering what you plan to accomplish by trying to destroy our ship.”

It took a few moments, but she got a response.

“_We are not helpless yet, unidentified transport_,” came a heavily-accented reply in Basic, indicating the crew did not often do business in the language. “_You’d do well to keep your distance._”

Ivven dropped easily into a rimmer’s accent, to aid their understanding; she’d been slowly losing her Core accent for years, anyways, so it wasn’t a stretch. “I take it the cargo you’re after is still onboard the freighter?” she conjectured.

“_I take it that’s what you’re after, as well? _ ” the pirate estimated. “_Don’t try it. We aren’t giving it up._”

“Precisely,” she measured. “Here is the situation: you are stuck out here. Your ship is crippled and you have no means of making it back to a port. There are two scenarios: either you die when your ship runs out of emergency power, or you die when another pirate ship inevitably comes here looking to salvage this cargo. Thankfully for you, I am not a pirate.”

It was a small gamble, of course; they could just as easily had partner ships on their way to assist. But Ivven didn’t recognize the symbols painted on their hull, which to her implied they were independent.

"_Then what are you doing out here? _” the being growled.

“I’m a smuggler. I am here for the cargo. Its owner wants it delivered. I’m here to finish the job.”

“_Th___a_t’s rich_,” the pirate snorted. “_How about we just take your ship, as our new vessel? You are the one who flew right up to our trap._”

“ ‘Trap’ would imply your situation is somewhat intentional, which it is clearly not,” Ivven said, unphased by their bluster. “I would remind you that _ we _ are the ones with the mobile ship, along with a perfectly capable pilot and gunner, while you are without engines. You will not be winning this fight, but thankfully, I think we can agree on a compromise. Here is my offer: you allow us to disable your ship with an ion blast. Your weapons systems will be deactivated. Then I will board the freighter and retrieve the cargo. We will leave you unscathed.”

There was a snarl over the comm. “_With no defenses, for the next ship to come along and pick us off? _”

“Not really my problem,” Ivven shrugged, “but I will contact an independent retrieval service to come get you when I return to the nearest planet. That’s your best bet.” She paused, then added, “Or, if you’d prefer, we can destroy your ship so you no longer pose a threat. I would rather you take my first offer; I don’t want to risk destroying the cargo I came for.”

They didn’t get a response right away. Jav’s mouth sat open slightly, an almost smile, impressed by the wordplay.

Finally, “_...we will take your first offer, transport._”

“Thank you, sir,” Ivven said, satisfied with herself. “Standby for ion blast.”

She cut the comm.

“You can always count on criminals to be cowards,” Ivven explained, glancing back at Jav. “As long as they aren’t crazy, that is.”

“Then which are you?” Jav asked. “A coward, or crazy?”

He could be quick sometimes. Ivven just smirked and kept him hanging.

“Primed to fire,” Shaltho said.

“Anytime you’re ready,” Ivven told her.

Shaltho pressed the control, and from the underbelly of the_ Swan _, a canister ejected out toward the pirate vessel. She waited until it was in range, then triggered the release. There was a brilliant blue flash, and a quick dissipation.

Shaltho looked at their scopes.

“Everything checks out,” she announced.

Ivven stood and pushed past Jav, then grabbed his arm to keep him from following her.

“Sit here,” she instructed, pushing him down in the copilot’s chair. “Shaltho might need help.”

“I don’t know how to - ” he began to protest.

“I’ll talk you through it,” Shaltho stopped him gently. “More than likely, you won’t have to do anything.”

Ivven gave Shaltho a serious look. “Keep watch out for more pirate ships. This would be going through a lot of risky lengths on their part to be a fake-out, but…”

“You know I’m on it.”

Ivven exited the cockpit and went to the storage lockers, pulling out a partially armored spacesuit and stepping into it. She shrugged her jacket off her shoulders and pulled the suit up, securing all the fasteners. It was a comfortable size or two up from snug over her clothes. She grabbed the bulbous helmet and a supply pack and headed to the short turbolift, tying her long hair into a knot at the base of her skull, the curls of her bangs still a stubborn fluff over her forehead. She stepped into the chute and pulled the helmet over her head, sealing it.

“Good to go, Shaltho,” she said, clicking into the comm channel.

“_Approaching the freighter now…_” Shaltho spoke in her ear. “<_I don’t have a very good feeling about this.>_”

“Neither do I, friend…” Ivven muttered a resolute response.

It was a short but none-the-less disconcerting distance to float untethered in open vacuum to the hull of the derelict freighter. The magnetic gloves of her suit reached the hull and secured on the surface, and she exhaled a tight breath, pulling herself up to the open viewport of the shattered cockpit. She dipped headfirst through the hole where transparisteel used to be, the pilot nowhere in sight. That was to be expected; they were probably off floating as space debris somewhere at this point.

When she reached the closed bulkhead to the rest of the ship, she pleasantly discovered that the emergency power was still enough to open it. At least _ some _ of the systems were still operational. Despite that, it appeared the gravity in the remainder of the ship had failed, along with the life support systems. Ivven floated through the ship to the cargo bay, testing the door panel controls. That door slid open as well. Not having to cut through walls would save hours of work. She pulled herself in by the doorframe, pushing her way through a myriad of free-floating crates, some still bundled in webbing to the walls.

She opened her comm channel. “Found the cargo. Will take a bit to prep it. Air’s vented, but doors seem to be functioning so far,” she updated them.

She heard Shaltho click into her feed. “_Would be excellent to just be able to shove it all out the back. _”

Ivven watched the _ Swan _ drift past the viewport on the bay door off in the distance.

“We’ll see,” Ivven said.

She made her way to the back to try the cargo bay doors, and got no response from the control panel. She tried it a couple more times. Nothing; not even a shudder. She growled in annoyance. Making her way back towards the smaller bulkhead opening from which she’d entered, she sealed her boots to the durasteel flooring and reached over to pull a crate into position. She gave it a shove towards the doorway, only to discover that the crates were too large to go back out that way, when it bumped weightlessly off the framing.

“No power to the bay doors and I can’t get them out the front,” she grumbled to Shaltho. “Going to have to use the fusioncutter. That just added a few hours.”

She could sense the uneasiness on the other end of the comm without even seeing her partner.

“_We will standby_,” Shaltho responded simply, and Ivven was grateful then for her professional calm.

Getting to work, Ivven pulled length upon length of high-tensile strength webbing from her pack, magnetically sealing the grips to the sides of each crate of cargo she came by, lashing them together. She pushed off to the next one, and the next one, building a sheet of cargo, neatly bumped side-to-side. Her breath puffed loudly in her ears as she worked in the eerie silence of the dead vessel. She began to build the cargo to a second level, pulling from the crates trapped in the webbing on the walls.

“How’s the pirate ship looking?” Ivven chatted, after a time.

“_It’s behaving_,” Shaltho replied apprehensively.

Ivven began to set up for cutting the hole through the non-functioning bay doors. The thought crossed her mind that she probably could have brought Jav along to speed up the work; but he had certainly never worked in zero-g before, and Ivven didn’t feel like babysitting. It would have been _ a lot _for someone who still couldn’t quite handle the feeling of entering and exiting hyperspace. No. That wouldn’t have been an option yet.

She stuck her framework of crates to the opposite wall to keep them from floating into her as she worked in the back, sealed her boots to the floor, and began cutting, settling in.

* * *

Jav hadn’t known that one could feel this tense and this bored at the same time.

Worry made Shaltho even quieter than usual, so what they did for most of the two hours Ivven had been in the derelict was strain their eyes scanning the stars, readouts, and the ominous pirates’ vessel for signs of trouble. Seconds went by feeling like minutes as his anxiety mounted, feeling that he would be incredibly unsuited to do anything about it if anything went wrong.

Ivven’s voice crackled over the comm unit for the first time in a while, startling him.

“_Hole is cut. Ejecting the paneling first, so don’t be startled by the movement_,” she panted, sounding drained.

“Acknowledged,” Shaltho replied.

Jav watched the aforementioned paneling float free from the freighter.

“_I’m coming out with the cargo next. Standby._”

The cargo emerged in a neat sheet, two crates tall, three wide, and seven long. Ivven came out last, gripping the webbing and riding atop the last two rows --

\-- just in time for a claxon to blare out in the cockpit, scaring Jav so badly his chest hurt. In the same instant, the pirate vessel exploded.

Shaltho lept immediately to action, grabbing the controls and yanking back on them. Jav’s stomach lurched at the sudden movement of the _ Swan _, and he lost sight of Ivven and the remaining ship.

Shaltho blurted something in her own tongue that Jav didn’t understand.

“_I don’t know, I don’t know! _ ” Ivven’s distressed but direct tone barely carried over the alarm. “_I’m okay! I’m fine! _”

“What happened?!” Jav yelled.

Shaltho started to say something in her own language again, then switched part way through to Basic with a shake of her head and a considerable amount of effort, “-- another vessel, it fired on the pirates’ ship!”

“Who?!” Jav exclaimed, as Shaltho pulled them out of the gut-wrenching turn.

“I don’t know, but they didn’t wait to talk!” Shaltho concluded, heated. “Hands on the controls, Jav!”

Jav’s head whipped around to stare at the sticks in front of him. He grabbed them, feeling petrified by the amount of power at his fingertips with very little concept of how to use it.

“_It’s after you, just go, go, I’ll be fine! _” Ivven was shouting.

Shaltho complied, burning the sublights.

“We can’t leave her!” Jav bleated.

“We’re not leaving; she can drift for a while!” Shaltho reassured him curtly, throwing a switch above her head, the alarm blaring in the cockpit mercifully cutting off. “She has a transponder, and we’d rather them after _ us _ than after her or in the crossfire.”

The thought of being left behind in empty space was a haunting concept to him, but Shaltho was right.

“Like I showed you,” she steadied him, looking over at his hands on the firing controls.

It recentered his focus. Remembering the targeting goggles, he tipped his head back and clawed for the headset tethered to the ceiling above him, pulling them into place over his eyes, his heart pounding against his chest so hard he felt as though he could puke.

The digital readout of the curved viewscreen that leapt to life before his eyes spun him. Ivven’s settings were all wrong; the view that replaced the cockpit with that of outside the ship was a 360 degree survey, and his brain couldn’t comprehend it. Just as quickly, it blinked to a more user-friendly configuration of what was directly in front of him, where turning his head from side to side modified which end of the ship he could see, and for the first time since the pirate ship had blown up, he got a look at their aggressor.

The ship was some chop job he couldn’t even place the base vessel of, it looked so gutted and appropriate for a band of rival pirates.

Jav pulled at the sticks in his hands, resting his thumbs on the triggers, trying to center the target with all of Shaltho’s weaving and ducking. He hazarded a shot, holding down the triggers and watching the red laser fire lance past the enemy ship. The ship returned fire, and Jav could hear it impacting on their shields. He tried again, and again, to land anything more than a glancing blow, but Shaltho’s defensive maneuvers made it so that he hardly had the ship in his view most of the time.

“I can’t land a shot!” he cried.

“I have one more idea!” Shaltho’s voice came through his headset.

He felt the ship level out, tracking a straight trajectory for just a scant second. He saw a glint of metal fly past the screen in front of his eyes, the enemy ship centering in front of him not long enough for him to fire before Shaltho pulled straight up again --

\--but quickly enough for a familiar flash of blue energy to rip past its hull.

Shaltho continued her ascent, flipping the ship upside down and back over to retrace the direction from which it came. They blew past the temporarily disabled enemy vessel, its running lights blinking on and off again as its engines struggled and flickered.

Jav ripped the targeting goggles from his face, once again in the cockpit with Shaltho, eyes wide and blinking.

Shaltho was intensely focused on her piloting, screaming in a straight line back towards the derelict freighter and the original pirate vessel’s wreckage.

“We only have two primed at any time, so that was our only shot. Glad it worked,” she gritted.

Ivven and the cargo had been pushed several distances away from the wreckages by the explosion, but to Jav’s eyes, Ivven still looked miraculously unharmed.

“_Shaltho? _” Ivven’s voice cut in, sounding tense.

Shaltho deftly lined up the cargo bay of the _ Swan _ ahead of Ivven’s trajectory.

“Going to have to do this quickly,” Shaltho growled towards the comm. She turned to Jav. “You have to go let her in,” Shaltho clipped. “Go! Go, go!”

Spurred to a panicked pace by the directness of Shaltho’s tone, Jav sprinted through the halls. When he reached the back of the primary wing of the ship, he slid down the ladder there, boots _ thunking _ down onto the ground of the auxiliary section that constituted the fully-converted cargo hold. He stood on the mezzanine, looking down at the bay. He turned to the left and spotted the control box.

“_Get the doors open, Jav!_” Shaltho’s voice filtered through the ship’s internal comms, adding to his sense of urgency.

Jav got to the box and lifted it in his hands where it hung tethered to the wall of the ship by a thick cord. His eyes tore over the buttons, trying to familiarize himself with the layout with the seconds he had. He pressed what _ must _ have been the master control for the main bay doors, and a harsh tone blared a warning. An energy shield sprang to life, and the massive doors mercifully butterflied open. He held in impatient wait; then, cargo containers floated into view just outside. They began to pass through the energy shield, one by one dropping the half meter to the floor only to be caught before impacting by the gentle repulsorlift that the webbing tethering them together supplied. Ivven floated in after the last crate, dumped unceremoniously to the floor, as she did _ not _ have the repulsor backup that the cargo had. Jav hit the button to close the bay doors, and rushed down to her, dropping to his knees in front of her.

But Ivven was already pushing herself up with her hands to sit in a similar position by the time he got there. The noise cut off abruptly as the doors shut, and they were left with only the sounds of their heaving breaths, knelt on the floor of the cargo bay in front of one another. 

Ivven pulled off the bulbous helmet of the spacesuit she wore, her hair mussed and sticking to her forehead in places with sweat. Jav felt absolutely white-lipped with adrenaline. Then, against all sanity, Ivven burst into a wicked grin.

“Worried about me, Catla?” she panted, out of breath.

Jav just let out an anxious but relieved laugh, collapsing back onto his haunches.

“_Ivven _,” was all he managed, in an incredulous tone.

“Not bad,” Ivven appraised, looking at the crates, seeming as pleased as he’d ever seen her; he couldn’t tell if she was talking about the entire mission, or his part in it.

Ivven got to her feet with some effort. Jav followed suit, still at a loss for what to say. He could barely believe what they’d just pulled off. Air seemed to fill his lungs.

It felt… exhilarating.

“_Ivven? _ ” Shaltho’s tentative voice floated over the comms. “ _ We make it…?” _

“Yeah!” Ivven called, a satisfied smile still on her face. She gave Jav a light punch on the shoulder with the butt of her fist as she walked by, heading towards the ladder to the mezzanine. “It’s payday. Let’s get out of here.”


	5. Chapter Five

_ 4.75 BBY _

Mandalorians were rather accustomed to not having a single location to call “home,” but that didn’t mean it wasn’t a relief to be returning back to the _ Swan _ after an extended mission away; Ivven trudged up the ramp, towing her gear in a pack on her shoulders and a bag clutched in her right fist, feeling the three weeks of built up exhaustion about to catch up to her.

Jav blocked her entry to the main access hallway, body pressed to one side of the doorway with his hand braced on the opposite, his outstretched arm making a tunnel. He looked eager to see her, perhaps because he expected a solace from boredom. He was the type of person to wear his emotions plainly on his face; she would have to work on getting him to not do that.

“Good to have you back on board,” he greeted her.

“You don’t get to welcome me onto my own ship,” Ivven retorted, carrying her bags forward; she had to duck under his bare shoulder to make it past him.

“Leisure time is over!” Jav announced to her, ignoring the dig and releasing the doorframe when it no longer did her any good. “We’ve been hard at work while you took your little vacation.”

“I’d like to see you do my job,” Ivven gruffed.

“I wouldn’t,” he just replied, padding over to the seating rest in the main hold and flopping down onto it, his bare feet making little stick-and-release noises on the durasteel when he walked. The side of Ivven’s mouth twitched, perturbed.

She dumped her bags off in her quarters, and could feel Jav hovering in the room outside waiting for her return. She pretended to ignore the behavior for a while, while needlessly rearranging things, but observed him sidelong as she did so.

Jav had been underweight for as long as she’d known him, but he’d started to fill out since joining them three months ago; there were the beginnings of a stocky strength to his slight frame now, which Ivven was thankful to see. She’d seen this sort of thing before, all too often in this galaxy: small things, stunted by poor nutrition and a general lack of food through their developmental years. She didn’t like to dwell on it. In any case, food on the _ Swan _ was plentiful, and Jav was taking to that life rather well, ignoring the initial hiccup that was the catalyst for his new living situation.

She could tell he wanted something. She finally stepped back out into the main hold and looked directly at him. Jav bit.

“So, I thought we could discuss the subject of my pay,” he prefaced, tapping his fingertips together in front of his chin. He rushed to explain. “Considering I’ve been a part of this crew for a few months now, and I’ve done my part in fixing things around here, I figure I could maybe start to get a cut of our profits.”

Ivven arched an eyebrow. “Oh?” she said skeptically.

“For example, you bought this,” he continued on, picking at the boxy sleeveless shirt he wore, as if he’d considered rather thoroughly his pitch to her. “Sort of humiliating,” he added, though his tone didn’t back up the sentiment.

“No, you picked those out,” she threw out in counterpoint.

“Yeah, and _ you _ bought them,” he insisted. “With _ your _ credits. I’d rather have my own.”

“Hm,” she grunted noncommitally, and began to walk away from the conversation, towards the cockpit.

“No, then?” Jav called after her, modifying his approach. “How about a stipend? A living fee? A say on the provisions, even? I’m flexible.”

“I’ll think about it, kid,” Ivven called back through the hallway.

He was right, of course; he did deserve pay, his own autonomy, for once in his life. She honestly hadn’t even thought of it yet; her and Shaltho worked so seamlessly that splitting credits was almost a nonissue for them. She made a mental note to bring it back up later.

_ After _she’d had the opportunity to rib him about it a bit longer.

“<Hey, Captain>,” Shaltho greeted her affectionately, turning in her seat when Ivven entered the cockpit.

“How’d it go?” Ivven asked.

“<Made a couple deliveries; nothing exciting. Everything went off without a hitch.>” Shaltho sat back, outlining the events Ivven had been absent for. “<Jav is really quite handy to have around. Knows how the spice trade works, obviously.>”

“Also he is quite good at carrying things…” Ivven interjected sarcastically.

Shaltho made a noise, an approximation of a condescending laugh. “<Yes, well, an extra hand is _ appreciated _, especially when you’re missing.>”

“<You should get some rest>,” Shaltho added, “<You look tired. I’ll get us going.>”

Ivven nodded in agreement, and headed back out into the main hold. Jav had left the area, so she set up on the seating rest to clean her blasters as she wound down. She felt the ship take off, felt them enter hyperspace, and was just about finished with her chore when she heard a loud _ thunking _ noise from somewhere deep in the ship. She paused, midway through polishing a blaster, to listen. An unfamiliar, low-pitched mechanical whirring sound picked up right after it, then abruptly died off. Ivven suddenly felt her stomach drop to her throat, and then before she knew what was going on, she was falling. She yelled.

One second, her feet were planted solidly on the floor, and the next, she had crashed to the ceiling in a heap, as if plummeting from a height, and stayed there. Her legs tangled in the exposed tubing where she lay, confused as to why she was staring up at the floor. Her body hurt from the toss. She could hear Shaltho and Jav groaning from different areas of the ship.

“What in the hells just happened?” Ivven shouted, pulling her limbs free.

“Are we hit?” Jav’s distressed voice called from somewhere.

Ivven stared around, trying to make sense of it.

Finally, Shaltho’s appraisal floated from down the hallway. “<I… I think the ship’s gravity just reversed!>” she said, sounding incredulous.

Ivven gaped. “What do you mean, _ the ship’s gravity reversed? _”

“The polarity must have switched,” Shaltho postulated. “The floor… is now the ceiling.”

There was a wide pause, and then Jav began to laugh raucously from wherever he was.

Ivven pulled herself away from the tubes and onto a ceiling panel where she could stand.

“Doesn’t that mean the dampeners aren’t working properly?” Ivven called, alarmed.

“_Something_ broke,” Shaltho said noncommitally. She finally appeared around the corner scrubbing the back of her head.

Jav quelled his disparaging laughter and appeared from around the opposite side of the ship, gripping the wall tightly as if prepared to fall again, reluctant to let go with both hands at the same time.

“I’m sorry,” he chuckled unhelpfully. “This is just too absurd.”

“I’m glad you’re amused, Catla,” Ivven snarled, her fists on her hips. “Guess what you’re spending most of your first payday fixing.”

He brightened. “You mean it?” he asked earnestly.

The sincerity of his face irked her. She dropped her arms to her side.

“Are you done?” she asked him curtly, feeling no trace of the amusement Jav was currently experiencing over her busted ship. She made a quick jerk of her finger off in the direction he should be heading.

Jav forced the smile off his face in a very false manner.

“_Yes_, Captain Oyre,” he postured.

_ The schutta. _ “_Don’t_,” Ivven warned.

In what was a good decision for his health, Jav disappeared down the hallway to get to work.

“We can’t fly like this,” Ivven said, turning to Shaltho. “We hit any trouble, we’re a sitting target.”

“<At least the safeguards appear to be functioning>,” Shaltho offered in consolation. “<The _ Swan _dropped us out of hyperspace before… whatever it was, failed>.”

Ivven shook her head, let out a tight breath. “Where are we?”

Shaltho gestured back towards the cockpit, “<Let’s take a look, shall we?>”

Using her impressive strength, Shaltho grabbed the back of the pilot’s chair above her head and lifted herself upwards, tucking her body and rolling into the seat, precariously pulling the crash webbing over her shoulders and midsection to secure herself upside down in the seat, where she could access her controls. Quickly discovering how difficult it was to read any of the displays in the cockpit when she went to tip her head over, Ivven twisted her long, pale curls into two buns, securing them over her ears and out of her way.

“<This is going to get old quickly>,” Shaltho grumbled, keying at the controls. “<Could just be the grav-generator is messed up.>” As a test, she punched a panel beside her head with her fist, rattling it firmly. She paused, as if waiting to see if that would fix it, then just shrugged and began to plot coordinates.

“I’m going to check on Jav,” Ivven told her, and exited the cockpit.

Anything that hadn’t been secured prior to the gravity swap was now unceremoniously scattered about the ‘ceiling’ she walked on, and it made getting all the way back to Jav a trial.

“Well?” she asked, finally ducking into the engine room.

Jav was knelt on the floor, diagnostic goggles over his eyes. He pulled away from the wall and rested a forearm on his knee to look at her, arranging the goggles up to his forehead.

“Well, it’s not the inertial dampeners, thankfully, but it looks like the gyroscopic stabilizer is shot, which isn’t a lot better,” he announced.

Ivven crossed her arms over her chest and heaved a sigh.

“Can we fix it?”

“Looks burned up in there,” Jav replied, peering into the exposed wiring. He looked again at the blueprints he had turned upside down on the floor beside him, and dug into the wall. His gloves turned a singed color in the places where they touched the housing. “Unless…”

He pulled back with a balled fist; Ivven caught him by the wrist before he could punch the wall.

“Would people please stop hitting my ship?” she asked, exasperated.

“I’ve never seen spare parts for this on the ship,” Jav said. “We’ll need to stop somewhere for replacements.”

“That’s not what I want to hear,” Ivven growled.

Jav blinked at her once, impassive.

“Right,” he deadpanned. He moved his hand in a _ swooshing _ motion. “Let’s just keep flying. We can rough it. I’ll pitch hammocks and we’ll roast bantha burgers over the incinerated electronics. We can use our liquefied bodies as condiments.”

Ivven stormed out of the engine room in a huff. She had to work around exposed tubing and sail clothes that used to be hung decoratively but were now just obstacles on her way back to the cockpit.

“I think we should replace the missing ceiling panels,” she concluded when she got back to Shaltho.

“Nez Peron,” Shaltho responded instead. “<Planet of farming collectives, apparently. We’re closeby.>”

“Think they’ll have the parts we need?” Ivven asked apprehensively, looking up and attempting to read the information projected upside down above her head. “Jav says it’s the gyroscopic stabilizers; they’re shot.”

“<I would hazard>,” Shaltho said with a nod. “<I say we head that way. We should stay sublight, needless to say, just to be safe. Should be about twelve hours.>”

“Let’s see if we can’t get the loadlifter up here in the meantime,” Ivven problem-solved. “Turn it into a makeshift elevator to get into the seat or reach the controls.”

“<Good idea>,” Shaltho agreed.

It wasn’t what Ivven had wanted to do with her first day back on the ship. She’d wanted nothing more than to sleep, but now her bed and all its comfort sat trapped uselessly above her head. With nothing else to do for the next twelve hours, she got to work on the mess, checking for damages and gathering loose items. They would need everything currently _ not _secured in place, secured in place, before they dropped planetside and the gravity swapped all over again.

* * *

The main hold of the _ Swan _had been decorated in eclectic street draperies from around the galaxy, and reminded Jav of a market; it gave the cold metal belly of the ship a tinge of hominess, the bright orange tones of the sails roped across the ceiling helping to combat the bleak mechanical lighting of the interior. He’d caught a glimpse of a similarly patterned throw on the bed in Ivven’s quarters off the main hold once, when her bulkhead door had been left open, and could draw the conclusion that the decorations came from her tastes, however unlike her the creature comfort seemed to him. It raised only questions.

Now that the ceiling was temporarily the floor, the sails provided the perfect disguise for which ceiling panels were missing, acting as trapdoors to inadvertently fall through.

While Jav untethered them from their attachment points and folded them up to put back later, Ivven dug elbows deep into the wiring of the “ceiling” beneath her feet, attempting to do some repair work in the meantime, in a method Jav referred to as ‘angry fixing.’ She seemed to have decided the stabilizer malfunction was the perfect opportunity to tackle _ every _latent issue with the current state of the ship. Something threw sparks back at her, and she recoiled. Ivven didn’t scream-- Jav didn’t think her the type-- but she did yell a startled obscenity that ground out into an angry snarl. Her ghostly skin flushed red, either with adrenaline or embarrassment.

“Maybe we should switch,” he offered, and threw down his bundled up sail in a lump. “This seems a bit too personal for you.”

Ivven scowled at him, but there was no flare-up in her eyes, which Jav was learning was a rather neutral expression for her. He dropped down beside her in his matching pair of maintenance coveralls-- though Ivven was wearing hers correctly, up and over her arms, while he had defeated the purpose by tying his around his waist by the sleeves, lest he melt from the constant bending over and standing back up-- getting on his stomach and reaching over the edge of the paneling to take over what she’d been working on. She grudgingly got up, reaching over to the holotable to grab the protective goggles there, and passed them down to him.

“Here,” he said, and Ivven laid down beside him, shoulder-to-shoulder, to hold either side of the junction she was trying to repair in place.

Jav pulled the goggles over his eyes, and Ivven turned her head away, tucked into her armpit, while he struck an arc with the welding torch, the distinct smell of burning adhesive remnants from removed bonding tape mixing with the metal. When he finished, Ivven stood back up and pulled her gloves off, dropping them on the ground beside him.

“You take those,” she said, and paced over to begin folding up the ceiling draperies. Jav wondered again with fascination if he would ever fully figure out what set her off and what didn’t. At times she seemed so obstinate and impenetrable that she was insufferable to be around. Then other times, it seemed more like pragmatism, and he could admire her single-minded focus and occasional bouts of humor.

He wasn’t about to test it today, though.

* * *

NEZ PERON

They docked at a bay in a medium-sized city, hoping it would put them in a good position to source what they needed. Ivven changed into the jumpsuit from her Mandalorian armor; it was unassuming on its own, a worksuit to the naked eye, but actually did provide some basic protections.

“<This is a pretty involved fix>,” Shaltho explained, following Ivven down the entry ramp and out into the docking bay. “<I know you don’t care for people poking around the ship, but I think we may have to hire a mechanic on, at least to help me.>”

“Jav isn’t enough?” Ivven asked.

“<I think this may be a bit much for his skill set alone>,” Shaltho reasoned patiently. “<Besides, he’s catching some sleep. You’ve worked him for like twelve hours, if you’ll recall.>”

Ivven sighed. “Fine. At least it’s a bunch of farmer’s mechanics here.”

It took a little over two standard hours of asking around to find the parts and the correct mechanic, a human male with a gruff mustache but trusting eyes.

“If you could work from the maintenance crawlway,” Ivven told Shaltho when they returned to the bay, “I’d prefer to have him work from the access hatch on the outer hull. That way I don’t have him poking around the inside.”

Shaltho gave her an approximation of a shrug. “<That’s fine with me.>”

Ivven hung by the mechanic outside, observing him closely. He did a good job of pretending he didn’t sense her hovering.

Jav eventually emerged from the ship to check on her, coming to a stop standing a meter or so away. He stared at her. Then he stared up at the hatch through which the mechanic’s legs stuck out. Then back at her; he gave her a look.

“You’re making him nervous,” he stated.

Ivven raised her shoulders nonchalantly. “That’s a problem, why…?”

Jav sighed. “This is weird behavior, you know that, right?”

“I’m cautious. See how I don’t get into trouble like you do?”

Jav just crossed his arms and leaned harder on one leg.

“Trouble like your ship breaking? _ Badly? _” he riposted.

She growled. “Go find someone else to harass, Catla.”

“Like that guy?” he responded, pointing through his crossed arms to the mechanic.

She called Jav a name that made his eyes widen. He threw up his arms and turned around, heading back towards the ship ramp.

“He’s gonna mess up, you lurking like that!” he sang back at her.

“Go help Shaltho!” she yelled after him.

Jav exited the ship again a bit later, without his coveralls and wearing what he had been that morning, setting off towards the bay exit.

“Where’re you going?” Ivven called, snagging his attention. He turned around.

“I don’t know,” he shrugged, walking backwards. “Cantina? There’s only room for one in the maintenance crawlway and I’ve worked for like fourteen hours; I think I’m allowed to leave the ship. I have my comlink, ping me if Shaltho wants a break.”

He spun back around and continued on his way. Ivven scoffed. She heard a noise from behind her and turned to see a hydrospanner hit the ground.

“I got it,” she called up to the mechanic, stooping to grab it and hand it back up to him; he took it and disappeared again.

Ivven looked back towards the bay exit, but Jav was already gone.

* * *

Jav poked at the droplets of condensation that clung to the glass in front of him, before taking another sip of the mild stimulant. The tapcaf was dim, sort of dingy, and relatively empty; what patronage there was, sat hunched over their drinks in lonely corners or unaccompanied at the bar.

The ship was more entertaining than this dump. Jav sighed silently in the quiet atmosphere, regretting the fact that he’d bothered with an establishment only barely detached from the docking bay structure. He didn’t know what he expected of the unpretentious town. Nar Shaddaa, for all its poor and destitute, still had a lot of credits to go around. Nobody_ had _ any, but it was ever-present, and it electrified the place. Nez Peron was looking equally destitute, but the presence of money didn’t seem to be there. There lacked a motivating force, and Jav could feel it.

He pondered his situation. Pondered the direction his life had taken. When he’d asked Ivven to join their crew, it was all the foresight he’d had into his future. Now that he’d had a chance to settle, feel like he had time and safety and options, he wondered how temporary this arrangement would become. He wasn’t sure yet if there was a “next.”

This was easily as comfortably as he’d ever lived; at least, since early childhood. He felt a twinge of guilt, as though this train of thought were ungrateful. Ivven and Shaltho had outfitted him, armed him, housed him; he had full range of the galley, and long swathes of boredom where he wasn’t expected to do anything except _ exist, _ and then even the boredom in and of itself was a luxury he hadn’t had on Nar Shaddaa. He hadn’t had the free time to be.

He wasn’t in any rush to leave; he needed to save credits and pick up some skills and see a bit more of the galaxy, all things he could do on the _ Swan _ . But… Ivven was still _ what she was _, even if they didn’t bring it up most of the time. He rubbed a finger on the rim of the glass, distracted.

Maybe he’d seen a glint in his tumbler, a reflection of someone entering the establishment and momentarily blocking the light coming in from the doorway. Something in him sensed motion. His eyes flicked up to scan the interior discreetly from under the brim of his cap.

The other patrons took notice as well. They looked at the newcomer the same way they’d looked at Jav: like he didn’t belong there. Jav had initially thought it because he was a Twi’lek, and the planet, or at least this tapcaf, seemed to be a thoroughly human establishment. Indeed the subject of their attention now also wasn’t human; it was a rough-looking Aqualish.

The skin on the back of Jav’s neck tightened. Something about the arrival gave him a bad feeling. The Aqualish began to work its way back into the room, scanning the faintly lit interior. Jav heard the distinct sound of creaking leather holsters, and knew he was armed. Alarms now ringing in his head, Jav slid as motionlessly off his stool as he could, boots touching the floor.

He stilled, afraid to make a move with the being still that close to the only exit. The building made a complete ring, with the bar in the center. If he let the Aqualish work its way far enough in… he could bolt in the opposite direction and maybe make it out.

He realized with a hot wave of adrenaline that the human patrons had connected the same dots he had; that two non-local aliens had entered their tapcaf in a short amount of time, and their eyes all slowly trained on Jav. The Aqualish, sensing the disturbance, centered in on him as well. Jav’s eyes went wide; both of them froze for a beat. Then, all hell broke loose.

Jav saw him draw the blaster. Throwing himself below bar level, a shot exploded above Jav’s head, blowing chunks of permacrete out of the opposite wall. The tapcaf erupted into chaos, the humans yelling and screaming and diving for cover.

Jav had two choices and half a second to make one: sprint in the opposite direction of the circle from which the Aqualish had approached, _ or _ , and this was the gamble, sprint _ towards _ the Aqualish. He was hedging his bets on what choice the Aqualish would make, and if he guessed wrong…

Bracing himself, Jav darted, head still below bar level, towards where the Aqualish had been standing. If he’d bet right, and his experience with getting out of situations like this held, the Aqualish would assume Jav would take the shortest way to the exit, and definitely _ not _ fling himself _ closer _ to where he’d been.

With a tense relief, he discovered he’d chosen right; Jav flew out the open doorway, hearing blaster fire track after him and feeling shards of permacrete pelt him in the lekku as he tore around the archway, running back towards the docking bay that the _ Swan _was in. Blaster bolts zipped past him, and he instinctively threw his arms up, ducking with a shout, but never stopped. The bay wasn’t far; he just had to make it there.

* * *

After a few hours, Ivven was able to send the mechanic on his way while Shaltho mopped up the final repairs from the installation. Ivven sat alone in the darkened cockpit, absorbing the quiet and lazily scanning the smuggling channels. She felt liable to doze off, having been up for nearly thirty hours at this point, but she resisted the urge, wanting to be on their way before she finally gave in. She briefly debated whether to try and find where Jav had ended up. She must have had a premonition, because she suddenly heard the faint sound of… blaster fire?

She sprung to her feet, alarmed. Staring out the viewport, she saw a few eruptions of permacrete dust by the bay entryway, and wasted no time in tearing through the ship towards the exit ramp, drawing a blaster.

She ran clear of the ramp and out into the bay, in time to see Jav come careening in at full tilt from the opposite direction. A rugged-looking Aqualish followed in pursuit directly behind him, and Ivven couldn’t do anything with Jav between them. The Aqualish threw down its blaster, as though furious it couldn’t land a shot, and raised a different weapon.

The stun blast narrowly missed Jav, still managing to hit him in the leg, and he fumbled to the ground; but by the time the blue rings radiated past him, they had grown in radius and Ivven could do nothing to avoid them, catching them full on. She felt the tingling numbness in her fingertips and her nose as her suit dissipated most of the energy. With the bounty hunter-- she assumed-- expecting her to have collapsed, it allowed her the half second advantage to fire off a blast from the hip that hit him square in the shoulder, and he spun out hard to the ground with a shout.

Ivven sprinted forward to where Jav was halfway getting up, grabbing him under the armpit and hauling him roughly behind her, not taking her eyes off the hunter.

“You get on the ship,” she clipped.

She heard Jav take a breath.

“_Don’t argue_,” she snapped lowly.

“I wasn’t going to!” Jav burst.

She took several large steps forward and kicked the bounty hunter’s blaster even farther out of reach, before standing over him, her own blaster trained on his head. She waited for the sound of Jav’s limping footsteps to disappear up the ramp, before addressing the hunter.

“Who hired you and who are you here for?” Ivven demanded coolly.

The bounty hunter didn’t immediately respond, but he eyed Jav’s retreat, and that was answer enough. She gave his injured shoulder a rough tap from her boot to _ refocus _him, and the hunter ground out a noise that confirmed it was suitably excruciating.

“Who hired you?” Ivven asked again.

The Aqualish stared hatefully up at her. Ivven rolled her eyes.

“Your only usefulness to me is as a message courier, so if you don’t have someone to return to, your story ends here,” Ivven threatened, retraining her blaster down at his head with a flare of theatrics.

“...Tigan Jucano.”

“Are you part of the Bounty Hunters’ Guild?” she queried roughly.

“_No._”

“Where were you contracted?” Ivven demanded.

“Directly through Jucano,” he wheezed with carefully contained agony from his place still on the ground.

“And was there anyone else hired?”

“I don’t know.”

Ivven was quiet for a moment, absorbing. “How much was the contract for?” she finally asked.

The bounty hunter named a number.

Ivven laughed. “That’s all?” she snickered darkly. “This isn’t worth your trouble. I think you’ve seen what I’m capable of. Drop the contract or deal with me, small-timer.”

She patted him down for any other weapons, pitching them across the bay well out of reach.

“I want you to return to Tigan Jucano,” she instructed him after she was done. “You will tell him to drop the price on Jav Catla’s head. Tell him he’s under my protection, and that I don’t tolerate interference with my crew and business. He’ll know who I am. Tell him,” she finalized, “that if he doesn’t, I’ll come after _ him _ instead.”

She tucked a couple credits in the hunter’s jacket pocket.

“For your trouble,” she hissed, patting the pocket. “And don’t stand up until my ship is gone.”

She paced backwards, blaster still fixed on the hunter with his hands splayed out in front of him on the floor. She heard the turrets of the _ Swan _ rotate and focus in on him when she had put enough distance between them, but she still didn’t take her eyes off him until she was up the ramp and it closed behind her.

The air in the cockpit was tense and silent when she entered; Shaltho’s unshakable focus was out the viewport, her hands on the turret controls, ready to fire if need be. Jav had braced himself on the back of Ivven’s chair, balanced on his one good leg. She turned copper eyes on him, and he shrunk under the scrutiny, an expression like penitence on his face as he stared back at her.

“You okay, kid?” she asked him slowly, breaking the silence.

“Yeah,” he murmured humbly.

“Are the repairs finished?” Ivven asked Shaltho calmly.

“Well enough to fly,” came Shaltho’s equally controlled response.

“Good,” Ivven said, feeling the fatigue of it all begin to form a tight knot between her shoulder blades. “Let’s burn jets out of here.”


	6. Chapter Six

_ 4.583 BBY _

ORD MANTELL

Being hunted changed everything.

Ivven was mildly aggravated with herself for having assumed that this problem ended when they left Nar Shaddaa; Jav hadn’t been important enough or committed a transgression enough to merit _ bounty hunters _ . He’d sold Jucano out to a rival for less of a loss than Jucano likely wasted on a bounty posting to correct it. Ivven hadn’t counted on wounded pride being enough to warrant merely sending a _ lesson _. But she should have known.

It put a pressure on every operation. Ivven needed it sorted, and quickly.

She could tell it had shaken him. Used to simply being in the wrong place at the wrong time, likely Jav still hadn’t adjusted to being the premeditated target of someone’s aggression. He’d survived up to this point by being a nobody. Any anger ever directed at him was fleeting, unfocused; he could retreat from anything, because no one would bother following. But that was different now. He’d encountered a bounty hunter, and he’d choked.

“_How did you get out of situations like this before now? _” she had asked him.

Jav’s face fell just slightly; he seemed reluctant to discuss the encounter.

“_By running, mostly_,” he had shrugged.

Jav knew how to use a blaster, but he was hesitant to apply it; the fact of the matter was, he was a scrapper, not a fighter, and if he was going to survive, he would need to know how to do more than duck and run. It was nothing Ivven could teach him on a starship, though.

The comm system at her workstation started to blink. She got up from where she lay on her bed, and tapped the panel to open the connection, taking a seat in front of it. The holo sprung to life.

“Voice,” she greeted him pleasantly. “Did you get a chance to read over my proposal?”

“_I did_,” he responded, just a hint of amusement on his cloned face. “_I think I can provide some assistance in the matter. Are you on planet already?_”

“I am,” she confirmed lightly. “Needless to say I would appreciate your discretion in this matter. I can of course pay you for your troubles.”

“_Pay me for my discretion, or my services?_”

“Both.”

“_Both come free. Provided you can be equally discreet._” His tone became a bit more serious. “_I’d rather this little session go unrecorded for the both of us_.”

“Fine by me,” she agreed.

“_I’ll send along the coordinates, if you’d like to meet me there_.”

“Thank you, Voice.”

“_Always a pleasure, Captain Oyre_.”

* * *

Jav lay in his bed, staring up at the low ceiling of the little alcove in the wall it nested into. Soft running lights illuminated the outside frame, and the frames of the other alcoves that lined the walls of the room, some empty, others stacked with his things like makeshift storage compartments, or on display. When he’d first joined them, Ivven and Shaltho had offered to clear him out one of the _ actual _cabins that they’d previously converted into cargo space, rather than continuing to live out of the port crew quarters… but he actually sort of liked it. He didn’t mind that it was a rather austere room with an excessive amount of beds nested into the walls; it was larger than one of the transport cabins, and he had it all to himself. It was an upgrade to his rotation of hostels on Nar Shaddaa, but not so plush that he felt unnatural in it.

He had too much _ stuff _now, he realized. He stared around at the clothes, the gear, the creature comforts. He wouldn’t be able to take it all with him if…

Jav sat up, swinging his feet over the side of the bed to rest on the floor, suddenly too anxious to lay there with his own thoughts. He padded out into the hallway, dipping into the main hold, hoping Ivven would be there. She’d yell at him to _ stop walking around barefoot_, or _ I don’t know, scrub the couplings if you’re bored_. Something comfortingly usual. But the bulkhead door to her quarters was firmly closed, as it had been for most of the day. He couldn’t help but feel she was scheming on something, more distant than even normal. Jav continued on past, down the access hallway to the cockpit. He saw the back of Shaltho’s furry head, sitting in the pilot’s seat, like she so often was.

He hovered in the entryway, hesitating. Shaltho sensed his presence, and glanced back.

“Mind if I sit up here with you?” he asked her, thinking he sounded rather vulnerable.

Shaltho gestured to the copilot’s chair. “Feel free,” she said in her gravelly voice.

“Thanks,” he puffed out, taking the seat. “...don’t really feel like being alone right now.”

Shaltho looked at him for a moment.

“You seemed rather lonely on Nar Shaddaa,” she noted discerningly, “for someone who doesn’t seem like they like to be alone.”

He laughed disparagingly, a single puff of breath through his nostrils. “It got hard to trust people, on Nar Shaddaa.” He stared unfocusingly at the lights of the console between them, distractedly picking at the broken top fastener of his shirtfront, a nervous tick.

Shaltho blinked at him. “Is something wrong, Jav?” she asked.

It was a loaded question. There was a _ lot _ wrong right now, but he didn’t know how to broach it. The bounty hunter they’d encountered on Nez Peron, and how he couldn’t shake that uncomfortable feeling that he was about to be abandoned; he felt ashamed at how needy it made him. He thought of Ivven’s pragmatic, cool disposition, remembered for a moment _ what she was _, and felt the panicked sensation rise in him again.

“How did you and Ivven fall in together?” Jav burst suddenly. “You just seem so… unlikely.”

“As unlikely as _ you_, I think,” Shaltho responded with just a tinge of humor, seeming to miss the anxiety in his tone.

“Fair point,” he acknowledged, the stab of tension he’d felt beginning to dissipate with the distraction he’d invented. He pushed the copilot’s seat into its furthest back position where he could see her better, before throwing one leg lopsidedly over the arm of the chair and reclining in it sideways.

Shaltho always gave in to his queries a lot more easily than Ivven ever did.

“Ivven and I met shortly after my time on Kessel,” she began. Jav knew this much about her already. “Some Imperial Moff or another needed slave labor, and I ended up on the short list of beings selected to enter their service.”

It was a very sanitized way of explaining the situation, Jav thought with distaste for her captors.

“What was Kessel like?” he asked, hoping it wasn’t too much.

Shaltho bobbed back slightly, thoughtful.

“I fared better than most, I think,” she conceded in her generous way; as if life on Kessel were anything less than hell for everyone there. “Selonians are tunnel dwellers. I saw sentients from numerous species-- humans, Wookiees, Mon Calamari-- go mad, simply for existing in the mines for too long without ever seeing the surface. Sometimes we’d have to harvest the glitterstim in complete darkness, with no light, for days on end. It… broke them. I imagine in the same way I don’t much care for open spaces. I lived mostly underground on Corellia to begin with. It made the mines on Kessel… livable.”

Her concessions made Jav’s heart ache. “You don’t have to make it out to be better than it was,” he told her.

“The only reason I survived was that my prison had shades of my home,” she explained. “I’m not condoning what they did to me; only acknowledging that being what I was kept me alive. It could have been very different.”

She seemed to ponder her place in the story.

“A group of Rebels attacked the vessel I was on, that was taking us to our new Imperial masters,” she recounted. “We were targeted specifically. They were after Imperial prisoners.”

Jav was riveted. “The Rebellion? Against the Empire?”

“Different than the one we ran into a few months back. The Rebels are broken up into cells; they don’t communicate much between them, as far as I understand. It’s just pockets of like-minded beings who believe in resisting the Empire in some way. _ This _ one decided freeing Imperial slaves was worth their time.” She paused to think. “I didn’t have much time with them. I think they hoped to find recruits amongst us, as an objective secondary to freeing us.”

“ ‘_Didn’t have much time with them? _’ What happened?”

“They succeeded in striking the Imperial vessel, and taking us aboard. But their own ship was damaged in the battle. They were leaking fuel and we were forced to land at a nearby depot. There wasn’t enough ground between us and the skirmish, but the Rebels had no choice; they had to dock. The Empire sent reinforcements to track us down. They found us. Everyone got separated. I managed to slip away, into the chaos of the marketplace. I hid in alleyways for maybe a day. That’s when I met Ivven.”

“How?” Jav asked in a soft tone, transfixed by the tale.

“Chance. She was there for business. Ran into her in an alleyway. I think she knew when she saw me, what she was looking at. She took pity on me. Offered to take me off the station.” A fond look passed over Shaltho’s glassy black eyes. “She’s a very generous person.”

Jav made a disbelieving face and held up his hands in a _ let’s not go too far _ motion.

“I can’t picture Ivven being so charitable,” Jav said, shaking his head. “She seems so… unaffected.”

Shaltho gave him a strange look, then tilted her head towards his person. He looked down at himself and realized the ridiculousness of his statement. Ivven made a habit of picking up displaced beings.

“What’s Ivven’s story, then?” he asked her, starting to follow.

“We’re all strays here,” Shaltho just responded mysteriously.

He was quiet for a moment. Then asked, “What happened to the Rebels? The other prisoners?”

“I… don’t know what came of everyone else. I imagine most of us were captured or recaptured. We didn’t stand a chance against the Empire and its resources. They tried. And I went free. I’m eternally grateful for that opportunity.”

“The Rebels lack organization, unity,” Ivven’s voice suddenly cut through the conversation. Jav’s head whipped around and his leg dropped from the arm of the chair to the floor as he sat up, to see her looming in the entryway to the cockpit. She’d arrived without him noticing.

“Ivven,” he said, as much a greeting as it sounded like a boy who’d gotten caught doing something he shouldn’t have; Ivven had that effect. He wondered how much she’d overheard.

“Until they find a leader, they’ll never make a dent,” Ivven said decidedly, sounding unimpressed.

Shaltho said something to Ivven in her own tongue.

“It went well,” Ivven responded, an affirmation. “I’ll catch you up on it in a moment. Jav? Need you for something.”

And Ivven took her leave, expecting him to follow. Jav got up and moved to go after her, then paused by the entryway to the access hall. He turned back to Shaltho.

“I want to learn your language,” he announced earnestly. Shaltho tilted her head, seeming touched by his words. “Selonian…?”

“Mandaba,” Shaltho corrected him patiently. “We call it ‘Home Talk.’ ”

“ ‘_Home Talk _’,” Jav repeated thoughtfully. “I like that.” Then, more softly, he added. “Do you think you’ll ever go home to your family…?”

Shaltho shook her head, a human gesture.

“My den is gone,” she said, as though it were something she had come to terms with and found some semblance of closure over a long time ago. “You are my family now,” she added matter-of-factly. “You and Ivven.”

The words hit him harder than he would have expected. His mind momentarily blanked, and Jav felt suddenly winded by the idea that that was how Shaltho saw them all.

Family? Ivven and Shaltho certainly weren’t more bosses, weren’t just coworkers, he understood that much. He’d had many such aquaintances in his life. He realized he _ liked _ this crew. _ Liked _ Ivven’s impatient, over-protective demeanor. _ Liked _ Shaltho’s quiet strength and warmth. Family? Jav hadn’t had a family since he’d been nine years old on New Bornalex, woefully disconnected from the violence about to take it all from him. Is that what he had a chance at here? Emotions welled up in him.

The weight on his chest he’d experienced for the past few weeks suddenly lifted. To think he’d been harboring some secret terror that he was seconds away from being thrown off the ship at any given moment for all the trouble he’d brought with him; prying Shaltho’s private misfortune from her just to make him feel more secure about himself made him feel ashamed now.

“Thank you, Shaltho,” was all he managed, his voice raw, humbled.

Shaltho looked back at him knowingly.

She said something in Mandaba then, the sounds short, and ending with his name, something he could only assume translated as an acceptance of his gratitude. He vowed to learn what it meant.

* * *

Jav followed her down the exit ramp, and Ivven could sense his surprise to see Voice standing a few meters away from the bottom of it. Ivven hadn’t given him much of an explanation yet, and he probably didn’t expect to see someone else as far out into the unpopulated outskirts as they’d set the ship down in. Voice could be an intimidating presence, as well, with his ramrod posture and wizened looks. He wore something nondescript right now, but Ivven could easily picture the Imperial uniform.

“Jav, this is Voice,” Ivven introduced them as they came to a stop in front of him. “He’s an old friend of mine.”

Voice put out a hand, and Jav went to shake it--

“At my request,” Ivven elaborated, “he’s kindly agreed to give you some combat training.”

Jav’s pleasant smile disappeared in an instant, and he whipped his head to the side to look at her, hand freezing mid-shake.

“This is rich,” Jav managed darkly, recovering from his nonplus. He pulled his hand back, still staring indignantly at her. “Why don’t you ever explain what we’re doing before you just throw me into it?”

“Don’t give me that,” she dismissed, unaffected. “It’s not supposed to feel punishing.”

Jav shook his head, distress visibly mounting. “Ivven, I’ve seen you in action, what you can pull off. There is no way I could ever shoot like that. I’m not like that, I’m more like a… a lackey_._”

“Some people are born naturals,” Ivven acknowledged.

“_Exactly_,” Jav interrupted.

“_Thankfully_, everyone else can learn,” Ivven finished her thought.

Jav opened his mouth to argue again, but his breath just caught with a little noise, and he pressed his lips together into a thin line, the shape twisting uncertainly.

“Jav,” Ivven implored, stepping forward and putting both hands atop either of his shoulders, forcing him to stare at her, all big eyes under a deceivingly human brow ridge. “You need to learn to handle yourself, better than you do now. You have _ bounty hunters _ after you. You’ve got grit; now just apply it.”

“Please,” she added, poking him in the chest with a finger before dropping her arms to her sides. “It’s not like I’m asking you to learn Teräs Käsi. You’re overreacting. And, you’re being rude.” She nodded in Voice’s direction to remind Jav he was there.

Jav rubbed with an open palm where she had jabbed him, glancing over at Voice.

“I don’t know about this…” Jav murmured.

She could tell he was scared. Not of the training, but of the _ why _. She didn’t really blame him for wanting to avoid the subject all together. But it wasn’t an option.

“If it makes you feel better, you’re not earning your keep,” she shrugged.

He looked suddenly stung. “How is that supposed to make me feel better?”

“I don’t know,” she shrugged noncommittally. “Motivation? You’re no leech.”

He sighed deeply then, defeated.

“Now, pay close attention to what this man has to say,” Ivven instructed, referring to Voice again. “He’s long outlived himself.”

“_Flattery _, Ivven,” Voice warned in a slight sing-song, finally dipping back into the conversation he’d graciously witnessed. Ivven gave him a bemused smile.

“I’ll leave you to it, then,” she said, retreating back towards the ship. “Voice can introduce himself more properly.”

Heading up the ramp and through the hallway, Ivven felt her mood fade as she looked over at the door to her quarters. She let Jav think there were no ulterior motives for being on Ord Mantell. But if one were being pursued by bounty hunters, it was a good place to start looking for answers.

She crossed to the bulkhead, opening the door and pulling her armor out from where it was bundled in the corner. She methodically got into it, sealing gription plates and checking to see that everything was functioning as it should be. Her gauntlets went on last. She grabbed her helmet by the rim, and stepped out again into the main hold--

\--only to see Jav coming around the main access hallway in full sight of her. The color drained instantly from his skin, and he froze in place.

“I-, the-...” he stuttered. She saw everything from startlement, to fear, to stupor, to disdain cross his face in the matter of an instant. His eyes shot to the floor, body stiff.

“What are you doing?” he managed, contempt leaking into his tone.

“...got a job,” was all she offered.

He shook his head, a scornful little puff of breath, keeping his eyes trained on the floor. Then, he just hurried past down the opposite hallway.

“Forgot something,” he muttered in explanation.

She felt any progress they’d made evaporate in that moment.

Ivven bit the side of her cheek, struggling to pinpoint the emotion she was feeling, and darkening as it eluded her. She felt hot, uncomfortable in her own skin, and her initial thought was to feel incensed, retaliatory. In the moment, she settled on burying the sensations with everything else from her past; snagging her poncho off the wall as she made for the cargo bay, she left by speeder, before Jav could make his return trip past her.

* * *

Ivven arrived in Worlport, the capital city of Ord Mantell, and left the speeder docked at one of the more reputable docking bays. Tucking her hair into a thick mass at the base of her skull, she set off in the direction of the coordinates she’d been given, her helmet clipped to her belt and hidden beneath her poncho.

She arrived at a reasonably seedy housing complex for long-term, temporary stays, and buzzed outside the entrance, watching the people who passed by her with a critical eye.

The door slid open beside her. Taking one last look out at the byway to see if anyone was around to see her enter, she rocked back around and entered the room.

The door closed behind her, and she scanned the small abode. The lighting fixtures cast a dim, warm light, simulating filtered sunlight, as there were no true windows. Dust particles floated gently by, catching the light and sparkling in the air. The sound quality felt a bit deadened, eerily still. Ivven took a few steps forward into the common room, notably devoid of furniture. A figure stepped into view from the open doorway on the opposite wall.

“I was surprised to hear you weren’t on Taris,” Ivven greeted the Barabel.

“This one often findz himself on Ord Mantell, for variouz reasonz,” Sleighter responded.

“All the same,” Ivven said. “It worked out for me; I was able to combine some business on my end.”

“What bringz Ivven Oyre to this one’s doorstep?” Sleighter hissed.

“A crewmember of mine is being pursued by bounty hunters,” Ivven explained cooly. “I’ve sent a soft warning back to its originator that I’d like the contracts pulled, but he’s taken to blocking my calls. I’d like some assurance that its reached him.”

Sleighter stretched his neck up, chin pointing at the ceiling as he rolled his head back and forth, before settling his gaze back on her.

“How can this one assist?” he asked.

Ivven slowly drummed her fingers on the dome of her Mandalorian helmet hidden beneath her cloak.

“Well,” she proposed, “I’d like to be found.”

* * *

Ivven commed for Shaltho; she responded promptly.

“_ Shaltho _,” came her friend’s voice.

“I’m going to be gone for a few days,” Ivven informed her. “Will you and Jav be okay with Voice?”

“<_Shouldn’t be a problem_>,” Shaltho replied. She didn’t pry into the _ why _ Ivven would be gone. “<_Anything we should know while you’re out?_>”

“Just make sure Jav is present and not wasting Voice’s time. He…” Ivven paused, hesitating to confide in her the minor incident that had occurred as she had been leaving. “Does he seem alright?” she settled on instead.

“_Jav? _ ” Shaltho clarified. “<_He seems fine; been outside with Voice all afternoon._>”

“Alright,” came Ivven’s dodgy response.

“_Ivven? _”

She shook the fog away. “See you in a few days.”

She dropped the comlink back into her gearbelt, then checked once more on her equipment from Sleighter. Unclipping her helmet from her hip, she slipped it over her head and stepped back out into the city.

* * *

The Scraplands resided just north of Worlport, a vast expanse of abandoned industrial fields, salvage pits, and stagnant acid pools, a veritable dumping ground of the planet’s scum and waste. Inhospitable without a helmet or similar breathing apparatus, Ivven gained a slight advantage over anyone she would meet there. Such an advantage, that she hesitated to go in much deeper than the outskirts, lest her prey decide better of trying to follow her in.

Her trap had been set; all that was left now was to wait for someone to spring it.

There was a talent to being able to exist in a state of complete boredom. Mandalorian children had to learn patience and self-sufficiency at a young age, and Ivven had been better at the long swathes of waiting in silence than most. Her mother had taken her hunting on Dxun when she was six, for large prey and for trapping. Most children of the galaxy would have been too excitable, to antsy to endure the stillness; but most children were not Mandalorians.

Her armor disguised her heat signature, amongst other things that would give her presence within the hollowed out skeleton of a former starship away, so Ivven was at least moderately comfortable during her campout in the Scraplands. She was just beginning to wonder if Sleighter had programmed enough variety into the life-like holo that she kept eye on. But on the fourth day of waiting, something finally approached her trap.

It was an appropriately skeezy-looking Kel Dor, slinking with all the pride she expected of a low-rate bounty hunter, which wasn’t much. He thought he was being sneaky, wrapping around the body of the derelict, out of sight of the fake encampment the holo projected into the open clearing between the structures. He held a blaster across his front. Ivven’s HUD fed her multiple angles of his approach from the cams she’d set up days ago to monitor the surrounding area. Silently, she pulled her stun net launcher close to her body, moving to the open hole in the wall, located a level above the ground.

The bounty hunter prepared to make his move; chest heaving a few times, he whipped around into the open expanse and fired a volley at the carefully convincing holo projection of Jav that Sleighter had constructed for her. The blaster fire passed harmlessly through the fake encampment, and the Kel Dor didn’t even have time to react before Ivven had fired a stun net to completely entrap the hunter, dropping him to the dirt. He let out a startled series of shouts.

Ivven rushed down out of the ship’s structure and out into the open air, the holo wavering as she marched through it to stand in front of her captured prey. She pressed a button on the net launcher, and the netting wrapped around the hunter delivered a paralyzing jolt, before she neutralized it so she could get him unentangled, securing his arms behind him in stun cuffs.

A few minutes passed before the Kel Dor was lucid enough again to sit up and speak.

“You’ll be killed for this. They won’t tolerate you attacking another hunter. He’s _ mine _,” the Kel Dor wheezed groggily at her between his swaying.

Ivven knelt in front of him, leveling her heavy blaster at his face.

“I’m not a bounty hunter,” she explained to him. Blinking a command at her HUD, the holo behind her vanished. “I’m afraid this is very personal.”

It was hard to tell where the Kel Dor was looking, since he wore the protective environmental goggles all members of his species did when off their home planet, but she saw the hitch of confusion when the holo dissipated.

“You _ tricked me_,” he said, sounding aggrieved.

“Lucky for you,” Ivven ignored him, “I’m not after you. I’m after who hired you.”

The Kel Dor swayed. “I can’t sell out my employer; that’s bad for business.”

Ivven placed the business end of her blaster flat against his bobbing forehead for a moment. “So is being dead. Or generally being pretty miserable at your profession.” She added the last part with a gesture towards his bound hands.

The hunter was quiet.

“Here’s the deal,” Ivven instructed him. “I don’t need a lot from you. In fact, I think my request is going to sound pretty reasonable. You are going to open a comm line for me with Jucano. Yes, I know who sent you. I’d like to have a little talk with him, and he’s not answering my calls. When I’m finished, you can go. I have no other use for you.”

The Kel Dor seemed to consider his options. His silence indicated that he understood what refusing her was going to mean.

“...fine,” he said.

“Excellent,” Ivven gloated, standing back up. “You just relax. Where’s your comm unit?”

He told her, and she fished it out of his pocket.

“Show me where to go,” she advised.

He walked her through how to contact Jucano. Ivven had to wait about fifteen standard minutes before she got a response.

“_This is Jucano. Panas Ra, do you have an update? _”

“Hello, Jucano,” Ivven greeted him.

There was a pause. “_...who is this? _”

“Take a guess,” Ivven mocked him. “Tell me, Jucano, how many fresh-faced bounty hunters have dropped this contract with you already?”

“_...Hello, Captain._”

“This is my friendly warning,” Ivven started in, her voice losing its lightness and taking on a darkened tone. “Jav is under my protection, now. I don’t take kindly to interference with my crewmembers or my bottom line. If you continue to cross me, I have no problem coming to Nar Shaddaa to end you myself, and I happen to know that you know who I am and what my kind is capable of. You don’t want me for an enemy. Drop the contract. Or I’m coming for you.”

The other end of the call was silent for a while.

“_Didn’t know the scrawny schutta meant that much to you_,” he finally replied with just a bit of a sneer in his delivery.

“He doesn’t,” Ivven insisted. “But is he worth _ your life _to you?’

More silence.

“_Consider the issue, and the contract, dropped_,” Jucano said tightly. “_This isn’t worth this much trouble_.”

“I agree,” Ivven concurred.

_“If that’s all? _” he prompted gruffly.

“That will be all.”

The call ended. Ivven turned to her captured prey.

“You’ve been most compliant,” she complimented the Kel Dor in a fallacious way. She stooped to tuck the comlink back in his pocket. “As per our agreement, you’re free to go.”

She went to retrieve the gear from the holosystem first, packing it all up and throwing her poncho back over her helmeted head. Then she pressed the release on the bounty hunter’s stun cuffs, stepping back several paces and keeping her blaster trained on him.

“Get out of here,” she commanded with more force.

The Kel Dor took several steps backwards, then turned and took off at a jog.

Ivven waited until she felt she was alone, then began to make her own way back out of the Scraplands.

* * *

Ivven changed out of her armor, securing it into her pack, before making the final stretch of her return trip to the _ Swan _. Jav, Voice, and even Shaltho were outside the structure, almost as though she’d never left, when she swung her leg off from over the speeder bike and walked it the rest of the way.

Jav was chatting incessantly in a volume that irked her.

“...what the galaxy needs, is Jedi. Selfless people doing selfless things. People who want to _ help _ people, fix wounds instead of cause them,” he was saying.

“_Pipe down _,” Ivven hissed as she approached. They were kilometers away from any city center, set down discreetly in a rural, unpopulated area, but his abandon made her nervous anyways. In a lower volume, she added, “Be careful where you say things like that; I know Nar Shaddaa wasn’t an Imperial planet, but we travel to those now.”

“You’re back,” Jav greeted her. She did a quick examination of his eyes, but whatever contempt he had felt for her when she had left several days ago, he seemed to have effectively compartmentalized, for now.

She looked over at Voice, the former clone trooper and current Imperial officer looking slightly chagrined.

“What have you been telling him?” she said with a jerk of her head.

Voice shrugged sheepishly. “Oh, just war stories.”

“Yeah, I can tell,” Ivven gruffed.

Shaltho was the furthest away, and greeted Ivven with a silent expression; the two didn’t need words to exchange communication.

“Come on, Jav,” Shaltho prompted, “Let’s get the ship ready for departure.”

“We’re leaving?” he asked, turning around to watch the Selonian.

“Yes; it was good to see you again, Voice,” she said to Voice.

Voice gave a polite but genuine nod.

“Likewise, Shaltho,” he said.

Jav shrugged, and walked over to Voice to shake his hand goodbye.

“Guess that’s that,” he said. “I feel like we’re always hurrying off.”

“I have to get back to my base anyways,” Voice told him. “I can only be gone so long before questions start being asked.”

“Thanks… _ sir_,” Jav added, like the word felt wrong on his tongue.

Jav boarded the_ Swan_, and Ivven turned to Voice.

“How’d he do?” Ivven asked?

Voice gave an appraising bob of his head.

“He’s eager; adaptable. Probably good for what you do, but I wouldn’t recommend him to the Imperial Academy anytime soon.”

Ivven snorted.

“I suppose… you’ll be getting back there, now,” she said.

“Yes,” Voice replied.

Ivven scuffed her toe in the dirt and sniffed, hooking her hands in her gearbelt. “You know the offer stands, Voice,” she broached the topic, talking at the ground. “I have… connections, that can help you. People who can reverse what’s been done to you,” she said, tapping her hair on the side of her head and looking him in the eyes.

Voice compulsively mirrored the gesture, rubbing gloved fingertips through his completely silver hair. He laughed flatly, once.

“I think a sudden halt in my degradation would look a bit suspicious to the Empire,” he said. His gaze softened a bit. “Besides, I sort of lost track of wanting… _ ‘forever’ _, a long time ago,” he added, as close to wistful as she had ever seen him.

“Voice...”

He stopped her gently with a gesture.

“Better not discuss it any further. This connection of yours sounds _ suspiciously _ like something the Empire would be interested in, if I knew enough to merit informing them. Best leave it an unpolished rumor,” he warned with a stiff wink.

Ivven relented with a defeated sigh.

“I am content,” he reassured her.

She nodded solemnly.

“Thank you, for being willing to do this. I know you must have broken a dozen regulations,” she told him earnestly.

He chuckled. “This is a bit worse than breaking a few rules,” he admitted. “But like you say: I have to take my freedoms somehow.”

He stuck out a hand. Feeling a bit sad to once again be leaving the senior-beyond-his-years trooper to his life of Imperial servitude, she shook it.

“Bye, Voice,” she said.

“Goodbye, Captain.”

* * *

THE SANCTUARY SWAN, SPACE

Jav wandered into the hold, where Ivven lay stretched out on the seating rest looking over a datapad. She set it down when he took a seat on one of the passenger chairs attached to the wall off to the side.

“So I guess all of this… _ investment_, means you aren’t kicking me off the ship,” he started in.

Ivven blinked.

“Why would I kick you off the ship?”

Jav shrugged. “Just feels like I’ve been more trouble than I have been helpful; and you don’t seem the type to mess with that. I don’t blame you for not liking me.”

Ivven shook her head frustratedly and sat up. He was different than when she’d known him on Nar Shaddaa, all impressionable eyes and cheerfully disguised trauma; he ran so hot and cold with her, now.

“When did I ever say I disliked you?” she asked, rubbing a hand over her face and submitting to the discussion.

“Well, I was just... _assuming_… from your constant icy-cold demeanor, that you, in fact, didn’t like me,” he explained sardonically.

“Don’t be stupid,” she replied acerbically.

Jav looked at her, disappointed by her response and tone, but not surprised.

“You’re very _ mean_,” he decided on.

“You’re very grating,” Ivven shot back.

Jav just shook his head long-sufferingly.

Ivven sighed heavily, screwing her eyes shut for a moment and reopening them, starting over.

“We’re not just some two-cred criminals who are going to dump you out somewhere at the first signs of trouble,” Ivven explained with fresh earnesty. “I take the protection of my crew very seriously, and you’re part of my crew now. There has to be something to separate us from the rest of the riff-raff of the galaxy, and this is it.”

Jav’s lips parted, perhaps unprepared for her to actually respond so honestly. She swore his cheeks went a little red.

“Okay,” he recovered. “You asked me before, so fair play: how did _ you _ get into crime?”

Realizing he would probably push the conversation as far as she would go, but deciding it wasn’t worth shutting him down again quite yet, Ivven played along. “I don’t know,” she shrugged, pondering it. “Anything that’s overseen by legalities or governments or bosses means you’re a slave or a servant to someone, and I don’t like having a boss. Do you?” There was a beat.

“This feels like a trap,” Jav admitted.

Ivven stood, and his eyes tracked her.

“We shouldn’t be having trouble with bounty hunters anymore,” she told him, changing the subject back to his original prompt. “So you shouldn’t worry about it. Just stay alert, keep your head down, and watch your back; those are all things you should be doing anyways.”

She moved to cross the room and enter her quarters.

“Wait,” Jav said, “Why don’t I need to worry about bounty hunters anymore?”

But the doors just closed behind her.


	7. Chapter Seven

_ 4.479 BBY _

THE SANCTUARY SWAN, SPACE, SOMEWHERE ABOVE THYFERRA

There was a beat loud enough to be heard through the bulkhead coming from Jav’s wing of the crew quarters when Ivven reached the door. She pressed a button on the wall panel and waited. After a moment, the muffled music abruptly cut off, and the doors _ whooshed _open to reveal Jav standing in front of her, gripping the doorway in one of his usual series of loose-fitting, sleeveless tops.

His ochre skin was glossy. Ivven looked him up and down with mild aversion.

“Why are you sweaty?” she asked him, with a wrinkle of her nose.

“None of your business,” Jav fired back with learned derisiveness.

She gave a little shake of her head, dismissing the topic.

“Get dressed,” she instructed him, passing the pile of clothing she held into his arms.

“What’s this? Where are we going?” he asked, grasping the pile.

“On a job. This is your uniform.” She pressed the door panel and the bulkhead closed between their faces before he could ask another question.

Returning to her quarters, she got into her own matching version of the utilitarian-looking jumpsuit she’d just handed to Jav.

It was the perfect introductory heist for testing if he could work on field missions.

Their target facility, a distribution center on Thyferra, was not entirely unlike the warehouse within which Jav had worked for Jucano, so he should conceivably been able to fit in and even be utilizable. Despite being a mostly human and Vratix-staffed building, there was nothing especially exceptional nor especially off-putting about how Jav looked, and he at least blended in a bit better than his more colorful brethren. He was even comfortingly human-looking, in a way, comforting because of a tendency for the males of his species to be oddly grotesque compared to the beauty of their female counterparts; Jav was perhaps average-looking by human standards, but passably attractive as far as Twi’lek males went. That was useful enough that, combined with a standardized uniform, he could go relatively unnoticed by the usual facility workers.

Ivven worked to disguise her more prominent features, masking her identifiable chin tattoo, and brushing her distinctly full curls into a tight bun at the base of her neck, pinning back her bangs. She pulled the matching uniform cap over her head when she finished, the illusion complete.

She entered the main hold where Jav and Shaltho waited to be briefed.

“Our target,” Ivven began, “is Xucphra Corporation. We’ve been commissioned to steal a supply of bacta, including some base ingredients, for our clients who otherwise can’t purchase it without suspicion.”

“Xucphra…” Jav pondered. “They have a monopoly on the bacta trade, don’t they?”

“A duopoly, not that it makes much of a difference,” Ivven corrected. “Either way, they aren’t a particularly upstanding group, to have a chokehold on the world of medical supplies, so your conscience can remain clean about the fact that we’re pilfering from them.”

“Our target facility,” she continued on, pulling up a map at the circular holodisplay table they stood around in the center of the room, “is the DC where the bacta is housed and arranged for export to off-planet storehouses.”

“Greeeeat,” Jav drew out in a sarcastic tone, looking it over. “Distro Centers dredge up such fond memories. My life’s come full circle.”

“Sorry, Jav,” Ivven just sighed unhelpfully. “You still work in shipping and handling.” 

“How glamorously you portray your profession,” Jav snorted.

“It is what it is,” Ivven said. “It’s perhaps ironic, but that is the exact reason why I’ll be having you accompany me on this mission, as backup.”

Jav blinked at her in surprise through the blueish projection between them.

“Me? As backup?” he repeated.

“Yes,” Ivven said confidently. “I consider your particular familiarity with this sort of facility to be an asset.”

Jav was eyeing her as though he wasn’t quite sure he was being complimented, or teased, his lips slightly parted. He seemed to decide on a neutral ground, and gave a small nod.

“Okaaaay,” he said skeptically, but agreeing. “I guess, put me where you need me.”

“Shaltho will arrange the getaway vehicle,” Ivven continued on, looking at her companion. “We’ll be meeting at this bay door here.” Ivven pointed to the one. “I have a contact on-planet, a Vratix, who you’ll be picking the company hovertruck up from. We’ll load the containers, climb in back, and you’ll speed away. There’s the chance this won’t go entirely unnoticed, so we’ll have to be quick and efficient once we get to the loading dock. Be ready.”

Shaltho nodded her understanding.

“Jav, you’ll be with me, but they’ve got separate entrances for humans, aliens, and the native Vratix, with different clearances associated,” Ivven said, “so we’ll be meeting up on the inside at the following coordinates.”

Jav’s forehead wrinkled in offense. “Why do you get to go in the human entrance? Hell, my father was a human. I mean, you’re some sort of not-quite-human, too, right?” he added, gesturing to her too-pale skin.

“As always, Jav, your manners are impeccable,” Ivven glossed over the topic. “_ One _ of us needs a higher clearance badge, so one of us has to go through the human doors. That’ll be me.”

Jav made a low noise.

“Just be happy we’re robbing them,” Ivven soothed. “They’re getting what they deserve.”

She straightened up, her hands sliding off the console.

“Alright,” she said, “let’s get into the details.”

* * *

ZALXUC CITY, THYFERRA, NEAR XUCPHRA CORPORATE HEADQUARTERS

“_You in position? _” Ivven’s voice floated to him, carried by the comlink hidden in his ear.

“Yeah, I’m at the _ door_,” Jav corrected sarcastically, murmuring discreetly so as not to draw attention to the fact that he was talking to himself. “Boy, you’re stuffy out on missions. Do I have to talk like that, too?”

Ivven just snorted. “_Alright. Get moving. I’ll meet you at the rendezvous point._”

“See you soon,” he replied, and hurried to keep up with the small crowd of warehouse workers arriving for their shifts.

Uniforms hadn’t been a thing at Jucano’s facility; the Cathar would’ve never sprung for the expense. It almost would’ve been nice, ruining someone else’s cheap, boring clothing, considering Jav had never been able to afford anything with any personality in those days to begin with. It wasn’t like they’d lacked a dress code for their workers’ sakes.

It wasn’t a _ far _ stretch that Jav wouldn’t be the only one whose first day in this facility was today; warehouse workers tended to have a high turnover rate. Jav fell into line with the rest of the uniform-clad figures, a random smattering of humanoid alien species like himself interspersed between the insectoid-looking Vratix native to Thyferra. They were funneled into a series of turnstile checkpoints, and Jav watched the workers scan the lanyards around their necks to enter, the Vratix funneled to the left, and the other aliens to the right. When he got to the front, Jav followed suit, pressing the badge around his neck to the scanner and feeling only a pinch of nerves as a small part of him wondered if he was about to set off some alarm. But the lights flashed green, and he was ushered through and into the facility.

He wasn’t sure why Ivven thought he’d be of much help here; Jucano’s warehouse had been dirty, dated, and poorly maintained, while this facility was technologically advanced; automated tracks criss-crossed and swirled above his head a dozen levels high, like the ribcage of a gargantuan creature, the noise of shifting product echoing in the large space. It would almost be a bit breathtaking, if it weren’t a monument to Imperial corporate greed, the Vratix laboring over their planet’s vital resources for human profiteering.

Shaking away the spectacle of it all, Jav made his way into the facility, trying to seem casual as he traced the route he’d memorized before coming here. Workers passed all around him; sometimes he moved with them, sometimes he broke away, as they did, before coming to a stop at his destination: a set of turbolifts. He pressed the doorpad and waited, wishing it didn’t feel as slow as it seemed. When the doors finally opened, the lift was empty, for which he was grateful. He got in and felt himself ascending. The lift started to slow, and he grew anxious again as it stopped before his floor.

The doors to the turbolift opened, and Ivven stood outside them, looking very unassuming in the same unflattering jumpsuit as him, her hair and bangs pulled back in a forgettable knot at the base of her skull, the tattoo on her chin absent, disguised with makeup. His heart still jumped into his throat a little at the sight of her, and he wondered if his face made any sort of an obvious tell that he knew her. There was no one else there to witness it, of course. Ivven, to her well-trained credit, made no visible sign that she even noticed him, her normally flashy eyes dulled by the shadow cast over her face from the cap she wore. Ivven stepped into the turbolift, standing next to him and turning around to face the door. The doors shut, and they rode in silence, unreactive, until they again opened to let them off at their floor. They both stepped forward, Jav just a half step slower than Ivven.

They cleared the small group of workers milling around outside the lift and walked shoulder-to-shoulder out into the labyrinth of seemingly endless wide pathways the ceiling-tall storage racks made. Ivven put her hand out, palm up, as they walked.

“Alright – give me your badge,” she instructed, finally addressing him.

Jav tugged the lanyard off over his head as told, looking apprehensive, and placed it in her outstretched hand. Then she produced two holdout blasters from inside her uniform, passing him one. He hid it away.

“What’re _ you _ doing?” he asked mutedly.

“They track our movements through the facility with these, to make sure we don’t deviate from our path. You’re going to go after the drop, as planned,” she explained to him, slipping his lanyard over her head with her own and passing him a nonfunctioning copy. “Me, I’m going to take the security crew on a bit of a chase.”

She must have noticed the self-doubt that leapt up in him, because she stopped in the middle of the long walkway, shelving units on either side, and looked him hard in the face. “You know the plan,” she told him, her voice level and controlled though her liquid orange eyes blazed with intensity. “You know how to do this. Just act like you’re supposed to be here.” She clutched his arm, a comforting but direct squeeze. “I’ll be drawing all the heat. Just get the product, and meet Shaltho.”

She took the final few steps to the end of the shelving unit with him, then released her grip.

“Go!” she snapped, and took off in the opposite direction.

With no one in eyesight to currently see him, he made away at a brisk pace. He wasn’t keen on being left alone in here, but that Ivven seemed to trust him enough to let _ him _ be the one to execute the mission, Jav felt spurred to meet her expectations. It all felt a bit like a test, but he felt oddly ready to prove prove himself; Ivven didn’t seem the type to leave a task to someone she _ knew _ would fail, after all.

At least he was familiar with this sort of maze. He made his way into the depths of the facility, counting shelves to keep a sense of direction, and controlling the early twinges of adrenaline. _ Stealing _ didn’t bother him; he thought himself generally a good person with a solid handle of right and wrong, but Nar Shaddaa had taught him the finer points of survival and how some people didn’t deserve what they had. Because of his and his companions’ actions, this bacta was likely going to end up in the hands of people who legitimately needed medical relief; there wasn’t much else it could be used for in quantities this unscaled. That felt exhilarating, in a way.

He passed a few random workers here and there, but he kept his eyes cast away, looking suitably bored by another day of warehouse drudgery. He’d gotten good at not talking to people, not drawing conversation while working for Jucano, trying to avoid interaction with the uninteresting and unsavory coworkers he’d been placed around.

The very back of the facility housed the loading docks, where the bacta product arrived to be sorted, or left to be shipped. It meant a series of unsecured containers, various vehicles needed for transport, and several wide-open doors. Approaching the alcove, Jav slowed his pace, letting out a breath and tugging his uniform cap down lower on his forehead. He peeked around the edge of the storage rack while pretending to check on something. He spied the crates they were after: unsecured and scattered around the floor in a sorting area, they weren’t logged or locked down yet. Like their Vratix contact had promised them, there were several neat sheets of the things already lashed together and arranged on cargo loaders. All Jav would have to do, is commandeer one of the loaders and drive it the short distance to the loading bay, where Shaltho would be waiting in the pilot’s seat of a company hovertruck with its backend positioned in one of the perfectly-sized bay doors, ready to tear away. The plan was to just drive the entire loader into the back, pull the door, and take off before anyone could follow or realize what had gone wrong.

But there was a minor problem. Warehouse workers in security uniforms and armed with blasters milled around the unsecured product that he was supposed to stroll in and steal. They didn’t look exactly _ vigilant _, but they were there in numbers all the same.

He opened up his line to Ivven.

“Hey, Ivven, this stuff is pretty heavily guarded,” Jav said nervously.

“_Alright," _she replied, _ “then I’ll cause a _disturbance.”

* * *

It was time to make her move, if she was going to make sure that Jav’s path was clear. Ivven had hoped it wouldn’t come to having to alert the security at all, but it had been an unlikely hope to begin with. She needed to do something suitably heinous, to alert the systems in the building that her tracking badge was off its scheduled course.

Ivven darted at the diagonal metal industrial strut that served to strengthen the base of the levels-tall shelving unit it was attached to, running up it part way and springing off with a powerful lunge to clutch the shelves three units up on the opposite side of the gap. She began to scale up the rest of the way, missing her gloves as her weight hung from the sharp edges of the rungs that she made into handholds. Reaching the very top of the unit, meters off the ground, she took long leaps between them, moving a direction in the facility that wouldn’t have been possible at ground level. It only took a moment for a proximity alarm to start to sound. She made away from the loading docks, hoping to draw some of the facility workers away from their posts.

She could hear the commotion starting beneath her, as the confused security personnel tried to figure out what was going on, and how someone appeared to their systems to be phasing through packed shelving units.

In her ear, Jav said, “_They’re moving away! _”

“Good,” she replied, just a bit out of breath. “Work directly with Shaltho. Give her a heads up.”

“_What about you? _” he asked.

“I’ll be where I need to be, and when,” Ivven puffed. “Just keep me updated.”

She leapt across another expanse, and heard a shout; they’d seen her. She pulled the blaster from inside her flightsuit front in preparation.

A probe droid floated up to her level, lasting seconds before she had buried three quick blaster bolts in it, and it spiraled back down. There would be more. Blaster fire tracked her position, impacting on the high ceiling and encouraging her to stay put; but she wouldn’t be so easily convinced or intimidated. She ran along the length of the platform, leading them deeper towards the center of the hallway the shelves formed, trapping them in an area where it would take them precious seconds to get out to the end of it if they had to. The goal was the waste just enough of their time, cost them _ just enough _ of their ability to react to things quickly, to buy the space for Jav to sneak the cargo out past them.

_“Ivven, we got it! It’s loaded! _ ” Jav’s frenzied voice came. “_Where are you?! _”

“I’m coming!” she ground out, ducking back from the edge of the shelf and instinctually throwing up an arm in front of her face as blaster fire shot up past her. Another probe droid floated up, spraying fire too soon and alerting her. She hit the surface of the shelf on her stomach, raising her blaster and taking it out. It crashed back to the floor, and Ivven sprung back up. She took a running leap, crossing the distance to the next shelf, _ back _ in the direction of the bay.

“She’s heading for the back!” she heard someone shout. “Cut her off, get in those other lanes!”

She sprinted for the bright white series of voids that were the bay doors that opened to the outside, barely managing two steps on each shelving unit before flying across to the next. When she reached the end of the series, she slid on her stomach over the edge and clamored down the side, half falling, half climbing. She could hear their shouts and footsteps, too close, and she pushed off from a height she shouldn’t have, not nearly far enough down to make the drop safely.

She did her best to tuck and roll out of it when she impacted on the floor, scraping to a halt and fearing the delayed pain response. She must have hit the ground hard enough, because she felt the familiar sensation of one of her subdermal stim implants automatically firing, racing to bolster her stamina and mask the ill effects of the fall. She’d be coming down off of _ that _ later.

The doors were several meters away, _ so close_, but still an impossible distance. She scrambled to makeshift cover, a tall series of crates stacked in a semicircle. There were security personnel with blasters cutting off her path, too many of them, beginning to fill in the distance between her and where she could see the hovertruck Shaltho had parked with its backside, now closed, in one of the bays.

Her own pursuers were starting to appear at her back. She shoved a crate off the stack to cover the open-air facing side of her cover, concealing herself, right as the blaster fire started back up. She opened her comlink.

“I’m pinned down!” she said to Jav and Shaltho. “You two get out of here with the cargo. I’ll find another way out.”

She couldn’t hear a response over the blaster fire that smacked around her, but she wasn’t waiting for one anyways. Her back pressed to the wall of the crates that made her makeshift shelter, she released a volley of shots herself over the top side, trying to buy time to look for a direction to dart. If she proceeded deeper into the facility, she’d absolutely be caught. She saw the hovertruck Shaltho drove tear away as instructed. At least that was one less thing to worry about: the product was secure, and Shaltho and Jav had made away without ever even drawing the attention of the security. That part was to plan. Ivven’s only path of escape was still probably those same bay doors. There were a handful of airspeeders parked haphazardly around. If she could get in one, she could at least take them on a chase. The bay doors were still open, but for how much longer, Ivven didn’t know.

The fire pinning her down was growing heavier, a deafening cacophony. She realized she didn’t have a plan. She felt exposed without her armor, and very alone.

She heard the whine of an engine, and flinched for cover as the back end of an airspeeder suddenly smashed through the frontside of the cargo crates that made her cover, replacing them with the broadside of the vehicle. The speeder came to a halt, hard enough to throw the driver back against his seat.

It was Jav.

“Get in!” he needlessly announced his presence.

Ivven dove into the open passenger’s seat. Security personnel were already closing the path in front of them from which Jav had come. He had the vehicle moving again before she’d even arranged herself, nearly thrown into the footwell, as he continued his reverse trajectory. Clawing for purchase, Ivven pulled herself upright in the seat. With startlingly adept control, Jav maneuvered the speeder backwards in an impressive reverse turn around the obstacle course of crates, loaders, and vehicles, arranging cover between themselves and the wild blaster fire, until he could finally whip the nose back around and kick it into a high gear, gunning for an open bay door. He lined it up, then they both ducked their heads for cover against the open firing range they had to cross to get there, trusting that look in Jav’s eye that said he had it handled.

The bright white of the overcast day and the rush of air let Ivven know they’d made it outside. She shot back up in her seat, whipping around to look behind them; she felt the cap on her head torn off by the wind as she lifted herself high enough above the small windshield, releasing her wild bangs. She watched two similar airspeeders fly out in pursuit.

“They’re after us,” she shouted over the noise. “Don’t lead them to the _ Swan!_”

“Where am I supposed to go?” Jav exclaimed, focusing out ahead of them.

“Take them through the city, lose them!” Ivven clipped, arm over the back of her seat so she could keep an eye on their entourage. Their pursuers let loose a few stray blaster shots that didn’t come close to meeting their mark, but it stirred urgency all the same. 

“Got it!” Jav said, diving for a lower altitude. Ivven felt her stomach float up to her throat.

The engine screamed in protest of the speed Jav was pushing it up to, but they had a wide courtyard to cross before they entered the industrial district and the advantage that walls could provide them. The gaps between the buildings were approaching much too quickly for comfort, and when they finally plunged into one of the shadowy pathways, the sound quality instantly changed, the rush of open air being replaced with the whipping and retreating noises of buildings and structures passing them at a quick clip. The walls flew past, a claustrophobic distance from either side of their airspeeder.

Jav throttled back slightly, a necessary compromise for the change in environment. Ivven looked back again, watching the other speeders follow them in.

“Keep off of main airways, take back alleys,” Ivven streamed out instructions.

“Yeah yeah, I know how this works,” Jav dismissed in an agitated rush, hitting several switches in a flurry of motion in an attempt to get more out of the old boat, tensely steadying the yoke. Ivven watched him for a brief moment, a bit taken aback by the sudden display of skill and surety. She’d thought maybe she’d have to take over the controls from him; but now, watching him deftly strafe the confined walls of their path, she doubted she could do better. Filled with a rush of resolve, Ivven set herself to her own task of covering their escape.

They cut between struts and pillars, flying through the tight pathways the industrial buildings created. They flew out into an open area, making a quick juke to the right to continue down another alley, but the environment still wasn’t complicated enough to lose their pursuers.

Blaster fire flew over their heads again. Ivven pulled her holdout and turned around in her seat.

Jav looked over at her frantically with a quick snap of his head before he had to look back to his driving. “You can’t kill them!” he bleated.

“Warning shots,” Ivven soothed. “We’re not there yet.”

She began to fire at their pursuers, some going wild, and some smacking threateningly off the nose of the frontmost airspeeder; the holdout wasn’t powerful enough to truly damage the vehicle, but it was enough to convince them to drop back slightly, discouraged by her close aim. They returned a halfhearted volley of their own. Jav flinched down lower in his seat.

Ivven laid into them harder, providing cover fire in the hopes that they’d decide this wasn’t worth it. She felt Jav tug her forcefully back down in her seat by the back waist of her jumpsuit, a second before the lip of a tunnel whipped over where her head had been and darkness enveloped them. They shot out the other side almost instantly. Ivven turned her head back around to watch _ one _ of the speeders still follow them through.

She glanced back in front of them. They were rapidly coming up on a fork of three paths: to the right, a gradually arcing path that took them into what looked like an endless length of solid walls on either side, a killzone if she ever saw one; straight in front of them, a solid and unyielding wall that if impacted upon, would smash them to pulp in the sudden halt; and to the left, a ninety degree turn into the unknown.

They were still rocketing forward, and Jav wasn’t drifting for the right.

_“Jav,_” Ivven worried tonelessly, the sound unbidden, pressing her side hard into her seat as if it could absorb her. She grabbed down hard at what was around her, bracing with her foot.

Jav didn’t respond, his face unreadably tense. He let up only meters away, ruddering the airspeeder around the impossibly sharp left turn, just barely clipping the opposite wall and shattering their starboard directional light, before smashing back forward on the lever and bringing them back up to speed.

The breath Ivven didn’t realize she was holding exploded from her.

“Lights off,” she instructed.

But Jav was already there before the words even left her, toggling the switch on the control board that shut off the rest of the running lights, to better disguise them into the shadows of the alleyways.

Ivven looked back behind them again. Seconds ticked by, and still she didn’t see their pursuer come around the corner. Jav took another turn, and her line of sight vanished.

She turned back forward, panting heavily as Jav took a disconnected series of turns, before the time stretched out in a way that made Ivven dare to think that… they’d successfully shaken them.

They exited the industrial zone out onto a main byway that opened back up.

“You’ve lost them, I think,” Ivven said, finally allowing herself to turn around fully and put her back against the seat cushion. “Should probably throttle back a bit.”

Jav’s expression remained tight, his eyes still dodgy and focused on the airway, but he did reluctantly reduce their trajectory to a less suspicious speed, and flip the running lights back on as they started to pass a scattering of other civilian vehicles.

They had a moment to breathe. Ivven pressed at her ear.

“Shaltho, you okay?” she asked.

“_Ivven_,” came the Selonian’s relieved voice. “_<I’m fine, what about you and Jav?>_”

“We made it,” Ivven puffed out, still a little short of breath. “We’re okay. On our way back to the _ Swan _ now. How’s the cargo?”

“_<I’m loading it now. In all the chaos, I don’t think they even noticed me leaving with it.>_”

Ivven felt the tug of a disbelieving grin at the side of her mouth. Small victories.

“Excellent,” she said. “We’ll meet you there shortly.”

Ivven dropped her hand from the side of her head and looked over at Jav appraisingly. He was still very quiet.

“Jav, that was… actually rather impressive,” she said, trying to find the words.

Jav shrugged, just a bit jerky from an excess of adrenaline, not looking over at her as if afraid to drop his vigilance.

“I might not know how to fly a ship, but I’ve done a lot of driving,” he offered simply. It wasn’t bragging. “Not the first time I’ve had to run cargo through a bad area.”

Ivven nodded, mentally adjusting her opinion of him. She brushed back her escaped bangs with a scrape of her fingertips before the wind took them again, sighing deeply and coming close to relaxing into the seat as Jav made their way back to the _ Swan _.


	8. Chapter Eight

_ 4.02 BBY - five & a half months later _

THE SANCTUARY SWAN, SPACE

The bulkhead door to her quarters slid open, and Ivven’s eyes settled on Shaltho and Jav sitting on the floor, huddled over the table in the corner of the hold.

Jav’s eyes lit up. “Ivven! Come play sabacc!”

Ivven just raised an eyebrow, crossing over to the holodisplay table in the middle of the room and entering in what she had come out to do. She set the datapad in her hand down on the surface.

“Isn’t it a little early for drinking?” she asked them, eyeing their tumblers.

“There’s no daytime in space,” Jav countered. “Now come on, sit with us.”

“I don’t like games,” Ivven declined.

“Ah!” Jav exclaimed, then excitedly dug in his pockets for something. He produced a worn piece of flimsi and flattened it out on the table.

“<What’s that?>” Shaltho asked in Mandaba.

“This is a list I’ve compiled of things Ivven has said she _ does _ like,” he explained. The sheet was decidedly small. “I tried to make a list of the things you _ don’t _like,” he directed at Ivven, “but it got too big, so I switched to this.”

He pointed to the top of the list.

“ _ ‘Orbital shipyards,’ _ ” he read, glancing up at her narrowing eyes. He continued on, unaffected, “ _ ‘That swoop bike,’ _ that time you took me to Caprioril for the races.” He put up a finger excitedly. “ _ ‘Twi’leks!’ _ I was very touched that day, even though what you exactly said was, _ ‘I like Twi’leks well enough,’ _ and you shrugged sort of noncommittally. I counted it anyways. Same goes for, _ ‘I love the Swan,’ _ which you softened with, _ ‘but vehicles don’t really rev my motivator in general.’ _ ” He moved to the last two lines on the list. “ _ ‘Fried crispic,’ _ ” he said, “aaaaand, _ ‘when you’re quiet’ _ .” He put his hands flat on the table and looked up at her, finished.

Ivven glowered at him.

“That’s not all I like,” she proclaimed defensively.

“Oh yeah?”

An example didn’t immediately jump to mind, which served to frustrate her.

“I like…” she pondered forcefully, “...a good jacket.”

Jav made a _ not bad _ face, and dutifully scribbled it down on the list, then gestured expectantly to the open space on the floor between him and Shaltho.

Ivven made a low noise in her throat, then caved, joining them and reluctantly accepting a hand of cards.

“What are we playing for?” she sighed defeatedly.

“Fun,” Jav ribbed her. He played his next hand, then leapt up and ran off in the direction of the galley, returning with a third glass and an open bottle of Hapan gold wine. Ivven put a lazy hand over top of the tumbler as he set it down next to her on the table.

“No thanks. Got plans later,” Ivven declined.

Jav insisted by lining up the stem of the decanter and pouring in between her splayed out fingers. Oh, he was well on his way already.

“You don’t have to drink it,” he informed her cheekily, sitting back down on the ground and picking his cards back up.

Ivven glanced at her own cards: a ten of staves, and a seven of coins. Not the greatest.

She shortly bombed out, and they went into another round while Shaltho and Jav picked back up on their conversation. Ivven could barely focus on it for trying to keep track of what she was doing next. Their glasses drained, their postures slumped, and before long Jav had tied the long headtails that normally hung heavily down his back into a pretzeled-up scarf around his neck in his flushed state.

“This isn’t even that fun,” Ivven complained exasperatedly as she reached the edge of her patience. Shaltho _ tssed _ in amusement.

“It’s not about the _ game _, it’s about the company,” Jav insisted patiently, his honey-colored eyes focused down intensely on his cards; he pressed the corner that shifted them. “And this is a lot better company than when I had to hang on drunk sabacc sharks back when I danced.”

Ivven raised an eyebrow and Shaltho visibly paused.

“You. _ You _ were a Twi’lek dancer?” Shaltho deadpanned.

“_I know _, it’s cliche. But there’s money in it,” Jav said, waving it off, chin resting lazily on his own lekku.

“Why did you stop?” Shaltho asked.

Jav shrugged in forced nonchalance, picking at the edge of his cards from where he leaned lopsidedly onto the table. “Clients get overly attached. The job got dangerous; then it got real. So I got out of it. I was fourteen; done a lot since then.”

Ivven blanched, unprepared for the sudden glimpse into how unsavory the galaxy could get.

“Moving on,” she said, laying down her cards. “Twenty-two.”

“Why didn’t you leave Nar Shaddaa sooner?” Shaltho asked anyways. “Just stow away again somewhere safer?” She laid down her own hand at the same time. “Twenty-three.”

“_Shavit, _” Ivven muttered at the sum.

“Hey, I _ liked _Nar Shaddaa,” Jav argued good-naturedly, sitting up straighter.

“I know you did,” Ivven said with a small smirk and a puff of breath through her nose. “You have the same deathwish I do.”

He grinned at her.

“It was loud, and exciting, and there were so many _ beings _ there,” he reminisced with misplaced fondness. “And music, and cantinas, and _ lights_.”

“And grime, and murderers, and poverty, and an air quality that’ll kill you… and _ Hutts_,” Ivven added, to level set.

“It’s not the _ Swan_,“ he recovered dramatically, putting a hand over his heart. “I didn’t have the same housing to return to every night, or _ meals_.” He excitedly placed his palms over his stomach. “I have abs now!”

Ivven laughed out loud.

“You do not have _ abs_,” she snorted.

“Well, whatever these are,” he resolved, unoffended.

“_ \--any muscle mass at all?_” Ivven offered in replacement.

Touch-prone Jav, who lacked the concept of personal space most days, leaned over and put an arm over her shoulders.

“And I have a much better boss, now,” he teased affectionately, in the way he knew she hated.

Ivven ducked her head and pushed his arm off her, slinking away from him.

“I’m not your boss,” she corrected.

Jav suddenly laid down the hand of cards he’d been sitting on. “Pure Sabacc.”

“Oh, _ come on!_” Ivven burst. “You’re the only one who plays this!”

Jav laughed victoriously, rocking back from the table. Ivven got to her feet.

“Alright, I’ve done my time,” she announced, stretching.

Jav looked in her cup.

“You didn’t even drink any!”

“I told you,” she said. “I have to prep cargo for our stop in an hour, which you’re conveniently missing.” She bent down to tip over his own empty tumbler in front of him, illustrating her point. “Why don’t you just take the day, sir?”

Jav relented with an overzealous eyeroll.

* * *

With the cargo delivered and the _ Swan _ securely back in hyperspace en route to their next drop, Ivven was finally presented with a solid span of uninterrupted, quiet hours ahead of her. Pressing her tongue against her cheek briefly in consideration, she headed back to the cargo bay to retrieve her own share of their current haul.

Jav either had a sense for these things, or inevitable timing, because as she rounded the hallway almost back to her quarters with her prize, the door to his own opened behind her and he emerged, launching right into whatever topic was on his mind, tailing swiftly after her. Ivven tried to hurry to her door.

“Ivven! Do you think if we restructured the coolant coils to sit closer to the--” he started in, and as Ivven slapped her door panel to open the bulkhead, she could see with his poor sense of boundaries that he had clear intentions to follow her straight in to continue on about this.

“_No_,” Ivven boomed, interrupting him and reaching for either side of the open doorway, using her body to block his from entering her quarters.

“No, Ivven, it’s quick, it’s just one thing, it’s--!” he reasoned at a rush.

He stilled suddenly and stopped trying to push his way through her limbs to prevent the doors from closing when he noticed what was in her hand. Ivven sighed.

“Ivven, is that-...” he trailed off, blinking at her with those big, readable eyes of his.

She took his moment of confusion to push him backwards away from her with a full-body shove, before turning to face him with her front again while releasing her grip on the doorway.

“Don’t be naive, Jav,” she entreated with an eyeroll. “I thought we were making progress.”

“_Ivven_,” he beseeched, hurtfulness in his gaze.

Ivven pocketed the vial of glitterstim she hadn’t had the time to hide from him before he’d stumbled upon her at the exact inopportune moment. She didn’t appreciate the disappointment in his tone. In response, she shrugged, a cavalier gesture.

“Grown-ups do spice,” she fired condescendingly, realizing immediately it was against her better judgment. “You’ll learn that about the galaxy.”

Jav’s stupor predictably turned to anger.

“So what, I can just, pick up some death sticks the next time we’re off the ship?” he exaggerated, gesturing overstatedly.

“I don’t care what you do, Jav,” Ivven said, pushing past him. “I’m not in charge of you.”

“Ivven, we talked about this!” Jav called entreatingly at her back.

“_Nooo _ , you talked _ at _ me about how you felt about it while I was in the room,” Ivven corrected him on the distinction, making her way to the cockpit in the hopes that placing herself around an audience would discourage his continued onslaught.

She glanced at Shaltho as she entered the cockpit, who’d heard them coming and stared back; Ivven flopped down low into the copilot’s seat.

Jav stood expectantly in the doorway, as if waiting for her excuse, partially obscured by the back of her chair that she’d spun crookedly around to place her heels up on the console. Ivven started to pull the glitterstim back out of her vest pocket, turning the dark little container around in her fingers. Jav dropped into the open seat, as if in a dare. She craned her neck around her chair edge to look back at him, her elbow propped up on the arm.

She held eye contact with Jav and dramatically popped open the container.

He shot back up, a dark expression on his face, and stormed out of the cockpit.

“Where are you going?” Ivven demanded after him.

“ ‘Fresher,” Jav growled lowly.

“Jav!” she barked.

“_‘Fresher!_” he yelled over her, voice muffled by the hallway.

Ivven scoffed, turning the glitterstim over in her fingers once more, before pocketing it back in her vest.

“<You should cut him some slack, you know>,” Shaltho murmured.

Ivven looked over at her, a surly expression still on her face. Shaltho finished what she was tapping in on the console, then returned the look.

“<He adores you, Ivven>,” Shaltho appealed. “<You’re not so dense as to not realize that. He worries, however misplaced. You’re his favorite person in this universe.>”

Ivven balked at that, making a dissatisfied face.

“<Oh, stop>,” Shaltho told her. “<Now you’re the one being childish.>”

“Jav’s not a child,” Ivven argued, pressing indistinctly at some buttons on the panel beside her, not meeting Shaltho’s eye. This didn’t seem like it was about the spice.

“<I know he’s not.>”

“I’m not going to safeguard him from what he doesn’t want to know.”

“<You _ do that _ all the time>,” Shaltho pointed out argumentatively.

Ivven finally shot her a glare, pulling her hand back from the panel. Shaltho stared back at her, unperturbed.

Nearly a year of Jav being on the ship, and they all still pretended like Ivven wasn’t a Mandalorian.

“What do you want me to do?” Ivven demanded from her.

Shaltho looked at her very levelly.

“<I don’t know. But I know there’s not another person in this galaxy you’d do for what you’ve done for him.>”

“_You_,” Ivven pointed out.

“Ivven,” Shaltho warned.

Ivven waved a hand dismissively.

“There are a lot of bad people in the galaxy who are going to take advantage of someone soft like him,” Ivven reasoned. “At least this way, I know he’s with bad people he can trust.”

“<That’s not it>,” Shaltho disagreed.

“What brought this on, Shaltho?” Ivven demanded exasperatedly.

“<I _ think _ >,” Shaltho started in, “<that you’ve met someone who challenges you, and who _ you _ challenge, and you spend most of your time bickering about the nonissues. You _ should _ be having it out over the Mandalorian thing. After all, it should be _ me _ who’s on your case about _ this_.>”

She gestured at Ivven’s person, and Ivven looked down at her pockets, realizing Shaltho was gesturing to the glitterstim.

“Oh come on, Shaltho, it’s not like I’m some glit-biter,” Ivven balked. “It’s_ fun_. We’re in hyperspace with nothing to do--”

“<_I _ know you’re not>,” Shaltho acknowledged sincerely. “<That’s not the problem I have with it and you know it. In fact, I don’t want to keep talking about it, because it’s one of those _ nonissues _ I mentioned.>” She spun back to face the console.

Thoroughly put in her place, Ivven slumped against the backrest of her seat. Shaltho had the upperhand here; Ivven couldn’t argue with the Selonian about her feelings on glitterstim when she’d spent three years in slavery on Kessel mining the stuff. It was an indiscretion of the business that they currently transported units of the stuff in their cargo bay, off to deliver it into the hands of some rich aristocrat or another.

They were quiet for awhile, and Ivven could tell Shaltho was waiting for her to make it right.

“You know when,” Ivven began reflexively, “someone reminds you that there’s a bit of good left in the galaxy?”

Shaltho nodded.

“-- and you just want to quash it?” Ivven veered.

Shaltho shot her a disgruntled look.

Ivven laughed once. “It was a joke.”

Shaltho relaxed again, then snorted. She was silent, but Ivven could tell she’d finally said something right in the Selonian’s opinion.

Eventually, with nothing else to occupy her time and her original evening thoroughly disrupted, Ivven set to working on minor cosmetic ship repairs. It busied her hands and distracted her mind. Kneeling atop the floor panel she’d removed to dig into the housing needing organizing beneath, Ivven felt something hot tap her shoulder. She glanced over at it to see Jav standing above her, extending a cup down to her.

“Here,” he said, sounding perhaps unintentionally pouty.

She could tell from the smell of it that it was the particularly bitter version of caf that she preferred and knew he didn’t care for.

“What’s this for?” she asked skeptically, not making a move for it.

Jav rolled his eyes above her and shifted frustratedly on his feet.

“Oh, just take it and don’t be weird,” he snapped, extending the cup out again.

Tentatively, Ivven reached up and took it from him, sitting back.

He was silent for an awkward half-second, then flopped down into a seated position next to her.

“And stop angry-fixing things on _ my _ to-do list,” he told her, scooting into her and shoving her over with his hips so he could take her place. “You’re the most dramatic emotionally-repressed person I’ve ever met.”

If it was an apology, which she could tell it was, it wasn’t a great one. But it worked for her.

He dug into what she was working on. Ivven waited for a few minutes, then relented and took a sip of the caf. Deciding it was weirder to sit there drinking and stubbornly refusing to leave, than it was to just let him take over the task that he’d decided was his penance for getting on her case about her vices, she stood and quietly paced away into the main hold, leaving him to it.

She almost wished he wasn’t so quick to be the first to cave in these instances; he wasn’t always in the wrong about these things. But Jav couldn’t hold grudges.

All except one, of course.

Ivven returned to her quarters and noticed she had a message waiting from Isasha; she must have missed it when she got back from the dropoff. She pulled it up and listened to the recording: a proposal for a mission. The longer she listened to what it entailed, the wider her slow, ambitious smile spread on her face.

* * *

COMMENOR

The occurrence was rare that they took a legal trading contract; the _ Swan _ wasn’t a freighter to outside eyes, after all. Usually, it helped them slip past that it was modeled as a transport vessel, but it tended to look suspicious when they offered to ferry cargo for legitimate means. Rarely did it pay as well as private ventures of questionable morality, either.

But it did help to get them on the planet for less savory goals.

Commenor was a solidly Imperial-controlled planet, being this close to Imperial Center-- dare she call it Coruscant in these parts-- and heavy on authorities: stormtroopers and civil servants of the Empire dotted the streets in as much frequency as civilians and local officials. The walkways were clean, and the culture of crime appeared to live mostly in that of political ventures and highbrow business swindlings. Ivven sent Jav to deliver their diversion cargo, while she set off to deliver their true merchandise: the spice. As she passed off the product to some aid or another, Ivven took some amusement in the fact that this would likely end up in the hands of a politician or the like. Glitterstim was often that edge in a negotiation that let you know what your opponent was thinking. It had its uses beyond euphoria; though she’d never known the rich and privileged to turn it down for that, either.

Ivven began the trek across the wide central plaza, very close to enjoying herself on her path back to the _ Swan; _the fountain in the plaza’s center was tall and grand enough that she could feel a mist on her face and arms where the water was caught and thrown by the breeze; it was pleasant. She found herself thinking about the tantalizing mission Isasha had dangled in front of her earlier today, planning the early stages in her head. She’d initially thought to try to pick something up while on Commenor, but now she thought they’d probably spend the next three weeks preparing for the heist. Ivven felt almost energized by the prospect of the impending danger.

She was shocked out of her daydream by the sound of blaster fire, so out of place that it took her a beat to even register familiarity with the sound. She spun towards the disturbance.

The screams of several citizens trailed the noise. Plaza-goers pitched themselves towards the ground, seeking cover. Ivven crouched, taking a low profile and trying to assess the jarring situation. This was no scummy backwater town where she would have expected to happen upon a shootout. Several meters across the plaza from where Ivven stood, the culprits, an unassuming looking group of humans, turned their blasters on the plaza-goers-- no, the stormtroopers-- and opened up on them.

“_For Parta!_” she heard one of them scream, followed by more shouts.

“They’re Rebels!” a stormtrooper shouted, before dropping to the permacrete, a blaster bolt finding him and melting a lethal hole in his chest plate. His companions returned fire.

A civilian man dressed in white suddenly bolted, only to be the target of a wild-eyed Rebel who mistook them for a trooper.

Ivven was frozen, trapped in the open air of the uncluttered plaza, suddenly furious that she let herself get so comfortable as to end up in such an unguarded position. If she tried to move, she risked drawing the same attention to herself, and she currently wore no armor, nor had any desire to reveal she was armed or capable. Ivven had found the handle of the holdout blaster hidden in her vest without her realizing she had even reached for it yet. Suddenly, the voice of a stormtrooper she hadn’t felt directly behind her yelled, “Halt!”

One of the Rebel gunman’s barrels turned towards the sound-- and by default, her. Ivven tensed, bringing her own weapon out and instinctively squeezing the trigger.

The Rebel had managed a shot as well, though. The blast missed the stormtrooper behind her, because it caught Ivven in her side. She spun out, hitting the ground, the air bursting from her lungs; her eyes shot wide. Milliseconds ticked by like minutes as she tried to make sense of what had just happened.

Her surprise mixed with anger. _ You have got to be joking, _ she thought. Caught off guard by a plucky, uncoordinated kid who probably barely knew how to use that blaster he was waving around. It only took one, unlucky slipup for it to all be over. Silly.

Searing pain. It was all she could suddenly take in. Ivven sucked in muted, panting breaths that sounded unnaturally loud to her ears. The boots of civilians escaping the area ran past her line of sight. Her arm was pinned under her side; every twinge of movement hurt. The wound was bad, she could tell; she didn’t need simple medical attention, she needed a medcenter.

She reached for her comlink with her free hand; it shook uncooperatively. When she managed to slip the comlink from inside her vest, she fumbled it to the ground with weak fingers. She gasped, then thought better of breathing when the pain spiked in her side. Time faded away as she waited on the edge of oblivion.

Eventually, she felt herself being rolled onto her back, freeing her trapped arm. She laid there, dazed, staring up at white helmets.

_ Don’t pass out. Don’t pass out, don’t pass out, don’t pass _ out _ … _

She wondered about the point of it all, a small shootout quelled in a matter of minutes, and for the Rebels to disappear into some Imperial prison to never be seen again. What this particular group of dissidents hoped to gain by terrorizing civilians and taking out a couple of troopers...

Ivven could hear a female voice repeating different assurances to her, trying to get her to focus. She didn’t appreciate the franticness of the words.

“I know,” Ivven replied deliriously.

Everything faded to black.

* * *

The taste of bacta was thick at the back of her throat and nose. It was pungent and saccharine, and Ivven couldn’t help the compulsion to click her tongue to try to dislodge the flavor. It was a lot better than being dead, she supposed.

She rubbed her legs under the sheets of the medcenter bed where she lay. Ivven knew from the HoloNews that two days had passed. The doctors hadn’t said much to her, acting especially dodgy. She’d seen no sign that Shaltho or Jav had been there, which meant they either hadn’t been allowed to, or still didn’t know where she was. Likely it was the latter. Likely they were panicking about now. Ivven was certainly feeling the twinges; what had happened, how bad the damage was, how she was getting off the planet without further attention, and what it meant for the time-sensitive mission Isasha had contacted her about...

Her side was still excruciatingly tender. It hurt to lift her left arm, and her breathing was pinched against the pain. Ivven wondered to herself why she had been taken from the bacta tank so early; she could have done with another day or so. The uneasiness set in that she had been purposefully left vulnerable.

The room she was in was sparse: no tools, no window, no comlink. She had checked. Her personal effects were missing; even her hair was loose and over her shoulders.

There was a sound at the door that had been locked since she had regained consciousness. An icy ball formed in her stomach when the people who walked in were not nurses or doctors, but beings in planetary security uniforms. It was not to be wholly unexpected.

The one in charge, a young human male, stepped forward and spoke.

“Hello… Tarshi Mix.”

Problem.

“Clever,” Ivven commended. “That’s not what my identification card said.” It hadn’t said Ivven, either.

“I’m Agent Mosseb,” the officer introduced. “And you’re being placed under arrest on the account of, but not limited to, blockade running. You can view your warrant here.”

He handed her a datapad. Ivven glanced lazily at the charges; they were missing more than several attached to that name. They didn’t seem to have anything on the _ Swan_, thankfully. Ivven could use the datapad to incapacitate the officer. But there was no way she could fight her way past his companions, or out of a whole hospital still injured like this.

“I do, however, want to thank you for stopping one of the Rebels at the plaza. You saved a lot of lives,” Agent Mosseb commended earnestly.

“Wrong place, wrong time,” Ivven shrugged. “And I doubt I did them any favors by helping you capture him.”

The officer seemed to pause.

“Unfortunate for you, perhaps, that the deed managed to land you in the system,” he said.

“Right,” Ivven agreed. She politely handed him back the datapad. “Guess I’m just glad you’re not the Empire that snagged me,” she added, glancing up and down his planetary uniform.

Ivven and Mosseb shared a look.

“I spare no love for the Empire,” he told her slowly, his face just a bit too readable to be safe for someone in his position. “But I’m afraid I’ll have a hard time keeping from turning you over to them. They can be very insistent.”

“I know,” Ivven agreed. “I’ve worked for them. Would you like to transport me to the next location now?”

Her off-kilter comments were leaving Mosseb visibly flatfooted.

“I have to admit, I didn’t expect you to be this agreeable when you woke,” Agent Mosseb said.

“It’s just biding,” Ivven told him with a direct stare. “Don’t confuse it. Clever of you to leave me vulnerable; I left the tank before I should.”

Of all things, guilt washed over his face.

“Expecting trouble?” Ivven asked coyly before he could respond.

“Admittedly,” he said, rearranging his vest. He clasped his hands behind his back.

“The times have left us all compromising our values,” Ivven commiserated slyly.

She had come to the right conclusion: Agent Mosseb was young, but looked still old enough to remember the days of the Republic. She could deduce from his manner that he did not fit into this new order; her barbs had stung him. They’d been strategic and pointed: if she dared him to turn her over the Imperials, he’d avoid doing so as long as possible, and the longer she could avoid Imperial law, she easier time she’d have.

An assisting officer stepped up with stuncuffs.

“Will you come quietly?” Agent Mosseb asked her collectedly.

Ivven stretched the silence, then slid out of the bed.

“Alright,” she said calmly. “Just go easy on the arm.”

* * *

The security force at the detention facility had thus far ignored Ivven’s requests for a comlink. It was a good call on their part, however much it inconvenienced her; she would have used the opportunity to contact Shaltho, and to put it delicately… Ivven did not expect she was getting out of this place on simple bail.

Ivven sat complacently in the cell she’d arrived in a day earlier, watching strains of light float up the length of the magenta energy field that kept her from leaving her prison. She’d answered the smattering of questions she’d been asked since then; nothing implicating, nor explicitly helpful. They didn’t ask anything that Ivven couldn’t construct a story out of that fit into their patchwork of understanding about her. Ivven knew well enough this was not her final destination. The real interrogation hadn’t started.

_ Interrogation. _ The word meant two very different things depending on whether it was the Empire or the planetary security force who decided her fate. Agent Mosseb had seemed an honorable enough sort, but Ivven wasn’t sure she was going to see him again. She hadn’t seen a stormtrooper yet, so that was something. Perhaps her little mind games had worked over his ego after all.

She was less concerned with troubling herself with thoughts of ‘_will I be able to escape_’, and far more concerned with thoughts of _ ‘will I be able to escape _ in time_._’ Shaltho would handle it; and if she couldn’t handle it herself, she’d know to get Isasha involved. Ivven’s thoughts were stuck on the mission Isasha had proposed, a heist Ivven only had so much time to prepare for before the opportunity evaporated. The tender, un-fully healed blaster wound to her side complicated things already. And if she rotted in a detention cell too long, it wouldn’t matter anymore.

Ivven was stirred from her thoughts of escape by the noises of a disturbance. It took her another moment to decide that it wasn’t the usual argumentative scuffle of bringing in a new prisoner, either. There was definitely muffled _ blaster fire_.

Ivven leapt up and pressed her nose as close to the energy field as she dared, trying to peer down the hall. A canister hit the floor in front of her cell, and she immediately regretted her glance. It blew, blinding her with a flash of light. The pinkish hue of the energy field dulled the flash grenade’s effects somewhat, but Ivven still reeled away from the entrance and sat back down to her cot, smacking her palms to her eyes and rubbing furiously.

As she removed the shroud her hands made over her face, a hazy figure made their way to the panel outside her cell. The energy field blinked away.

“Hello, Ivven,” Jav greeted her matter-of-factly. “This is a rescue.”

Ivven’s mouth hung open as he rushed forward to her.

“_Jav?_” she said, as if doubting what she saw.

“Yeah, I’d be surprised, too,” he chatted almost casually over the sound of blaster fire. He wore a Defender sporting blaster pistol strapped to his chest, and held a modified blaster carbine in his hand. He took her elbow with his free hand as she stood, noticing her cradling her opposite arm to her side and her visible hunch. “Are you hurt? Can you walk?”

Ivven recovered her composure. “Of course, let’s get out of here!” she burst.

Jav nodded once, and they both emerged into the smoky, obscured hallway. Ivven reached for the blaster holstered on Jav’s chest, pulling it out and holding it ready.

“You spend all day thinking of that line? How did you get in here?” she shouted over the noise of blaster fire down the hall. “Don’t tell me it’s just you!”

“I’m not alone,” he told her as they strafed past other cells, and as if on cue, another being appeared ahead of their path. It was tall, imposing, and covered in heavy body armor; other than that, Ivven couldn’t make out any more details of the room ahead through the shroud of canister smoke. Whatever it was, it wasn’t Shaltho. It traded fire over the shouts and screams of the detention guards.

“Who in the hells is that?” Ivven demanded. She felt a twang in her side, the words winding her. Ivven doubled over and clutched at her wound with a pin of her elbow and a strain of noise from between her teeth.

“Woah!” Jav pressed a hand to her sternum to keep her upright, then worked her good arm over his shoulder.

“She’s getting us out of here!” Jav shouted, crouching slightly with Ivven and helping her to keep moving painfully forward.

“Are we ready?” the armored being called back.

“Let’s go!” Jav responded.

The figure pushed forward, disappearing from sight. Ivven couldn’t quite seem to pull herself to full height again after the attack of pain in her side, so she awkwardly hobbled at a punishing pace with Jav’s assistance, uncomfortably knocking against the pouches secured over his shoulder as they made their way, keeping close to the walls through the obscuring smoke. She could only make out indistinct flashes of light that well missed their mark.

“_Hngh!. _.. don’t you think you’re a little easy to spot?” Ivven ground out between her teeth, pressed up against Jav’s yellow shirt.

“I’m wearing the energy dissipators you gave me,” Jav assuaged.

“I just got you a new model, these aren’t the right ones,” Ivven told him.

“Well, if you, you know, _ told me _ anything sooner than the last _ possible _ second _ ever _ in your life, I might have known about them!” Jav bickered back.

“Those won’t do much for a shot to the head!” she warned.

They finally caught up with the mystery figure, and Ivven sucked in a surprised breath at the sight of the striking female Falleen.

“Are you two finished?” the Falleen demanded. “How about _ don’t get shot_, and none of that business will matter!”

Ivven nodded to the woman, and their new ally turned back around. Jav bounced once, forced to readjust his sliding grip on Ivven’s arm as they hurried to follow; Ivven reeled with pain at the move.

“_Argh! _Careful!” Ivven practically whimpered, the word being dragged out into multiple syllables.

“Sorry!”

They strafed the hallways, the Falleen twisting around to pitch another smoke canister on their heels back in the direction of the commotion.

“Where are we going?” Ivven puffed.

“Going out the back way,” Jav said, letting her rest against the wall briefly as he peered around the next corner. A few stray bolts whipped past them through the haze from which they’d just come, way too close, and Ivven fired a few shots back to discourage any more, as Jav tugged her around to the other side of the wall for cover.

“Speeder’s parked there,” he panted.

“It’s clear!” the Falleen shouted.

They wasted no time in closing the final distance down the hallway to burst through the tiny access doorway at the end of it; the Falleen waited for them to go through first, then unleashed a spray of blaster fire from her rifle back towards their pursuers.

Jav helped Ivven into the back of the open airspeeder that was parked just outside in the alleyway. The Falleen slid in the pilot’s seat and hit the controls. They tore away in what seemed like a predetermined route, and as Ivven settled stiffly into the seat with a hiss, the entourage she expected to give chase after them never came.

“There,” the Falleen said. “That wasn’t so hard.”

“Who are you?” Ivven asked the back of the woman’s head over the wind, as Jav fretted over her in the backseat; if Ivven looked as bad as she felt, the fretting was probably warranted.

The Falleen’s sleek black topknot tilted slightly as she turned her chin just barely in Ivven’s direction.

“My name’s Mohv. Your crew hired me to help bust you out of jail,” she said in her strangely soothing yet captivatingly direct voice. “I’m part of Isasha’s network; happened to be in town.”

Ivven waited a beat, then answered with, “Thank you.”

“I’m a mercenary,” Mohv responded simply. “I did a job.”

Fine by Ivven. She was impressed with the way the Falleen had made quick work of the layout of the detention center. The body armor she wore was nothing to shake a shock stick at, either.

“Ivven, were you _ shot?_” Jav suddenly blurted amidst his inspection of her state, distracting Ivven away from Mohv.

“Yeah,” Ivven wheezed, tugging her ugly prisoner’s shirt hem back down to the waistband of her matching trousers. “In that Rebel shootout. I take it you saw the HoloNews? Figured that’s how you found me.”

“Are you okay??” he bleated.

Ivven gave a little considering gesture. “Well, I much prefer the feeling of being shot to that of breaking a limb, so, yeah. I’m fine.”

Jav gave her a look, then seemed to think better of engaging that wormhole, and shooed away whatever comment he was about to make with a little shake of his head, instead reaching to take off his pouches and rummaging to produce a medpac.

“So,” Ivven said, reengaging Mohv. “We going to have a few more charges on our hands? How many prison guards did you just _ retire? _”

“The blaster setting I was using wasn’t enough to kill anyone,” Mohv sighed patiently. “Your boyfriend was very clear about that. If it had been an Imperial prison, now, I would’ve insisted.”

_ Interesting. _ “Not a fan of Imperials, huh?”

“Is any alien?” she replied.

“You got any work lined up two and a half standard weeks from now?” Ivven posed.

She felt Jav’s eyes lift to her face, confused. Mohv was quiet for a moment.

“You offering?” she finally responded.

“Let’s chat when we get back to the ship,” Ivven strung. “Is that where we’re heading?”

“Yes,” Mohv confirmed.

“Good,” Ivven said, gears turning in her head. “Got some facility layout holos to show you. Would love your thoughts.”

* * *

Ivven, Shaltho, Jav, and their unexpected guest Mohv, all convened around the low table in the corner of the _ Swan _’s main hold, reviewing the holos Isasha had included in his message to Ivven. Ivven didn’t reveal the full extent of the details, just enough to tantalize the skilled mercenary and get her professional read. It was the first time Shaltho and Jav had seen any of the message, either.

“How about thirty percent?” Ivven proposed.

Amusement flashed over Mohv’s stately features. “You desperate for help on this, or something?”

Ivven shrugged nonchalantly. “I like to incentivize mercenaries I don’t know well to _ not _ leave me out to dry on missions.”

Mohv seemed to agree with that sentiment.

“Thirty sounds excellent,” she said lightly. “So what’s next?”

“Well, is there anywhere in the system we can take you for now? To prepare for the mission?” Ivven asked “We probably won’t be returning to Commenor for a while, so, won’t be able to scoop you here later when the time comes. Sorry if this is home.”

“It’s not,” Mohv confirmed. “Got room on the ship? Wouldn’t mind just passage for a while. No huge need to blow two weeks somewhere else in between. I’d rather work on the plan.”

Ivven nodded slowly. “We can probably do you. What’s it you got against Imperials?” she tacked on suddenly.

She could see the ridges in Mohv’s green skin slacken around her face, darkening, but not at her; at a memory. 

“Heard of the bombardment of Falleen?” Mohv asked.

Ivven had. Her and Shaltho exchanged a glance from across the table. It was recent. She remembered being in the cockpit and trying to parse from the HoloNet what had really happened there. Regardless, it had ended in 200,000 Falleen dead.

“Yes,” Ivven said simply.

“I had a husband once,” Mohv stated tellingly. It was all she said.

Ivven nodded.

Just as quickly, the Falleen visibly pushed the memory away, the jousting look returning to her eyes.

“How about you? How did the Imps affect _ your _path?” 

Ivven felt Jav’s presence next to her on the seating rest with a sudden acuteness.

Ivven favored Mohv with a rueful smile instead. “I’ll share after we make our fortune.”

“Alright, let’s get some more bacta in your system,” Jav announced, none-the-wiser to her hesitation, but hurrying the conversation to its end. He stood from where he sat too close to her, having refused to leave her side basically since he’d found her in her cell, and fussed over her injuries ever since. He’d expressed his dissatisfaction in Ivven’s insistence that they deal with business first, and medical attention second, but his patience had apparently worn out.

He held out his hands to her. Ivven took them, finally giving in to the fatigue.

“Wow, you must really feel terrible,” he commented when her hands hit his.

“Oh, shut up,” she told him, following him to the medbay.

“Can I show you to some quarters?” she heard Shaltho politely offer to Mohv from behind her.

“Please,” came the mercenary widow’s equally measured reply.


	9. Chapter Nine

_ 4 BBY _

THE SANCTUARY SWAN, SPACE

Ivven crossed her arms over her chest.

“We’ve been commissioned to retrieve a series of objects for the government of Glee Anselm,” she began their briefing.

Shaltho visibly reacted. “The government?” she said in Basic, speaking the tongue to the benefit of their guest, Mohv, who stood on the opposite side of the holodisplay table as them. “As in, actual officials?”

“Actual officials,  _ unofficially, _ ” Ivven refined. She pulled up a holo of what appeared to be a planetary body. “We’ll be operating in the Cyax system, on an unnamed moon off an unnamed planet. The system isn’t scouted; it shouldn’t even be populated,” she explained. “We only know a bit about it because one of Isasha’s contacts encountered it while tracing another ship. It seems it’s been decided this “pinnacle moon” will be the location of an illicit auction of commandeered cultural artifacts.”

“Commandeered?” Jav asked curiously from where he stood with both hands leaned onto the table, cluing into the euphemism.

“Legally seized by the Empire from various worlds they’ve dominated,” Ivven clarified, her distaste leaking into her tone. “Most of the items were of some significance, culturally, to the governments or peoples they were stolen from, taken either because of their monetary value, or to dishearten the populaces. Most likely because some Moff wanted it for their personal collection.”

Mohv scoffed darkly.

“So what are a punch of prissy, rich Imperials doing on some worse-than-backwater moon auctioning their war prizes off to one another?” Mohv asked, practically bristling with contempt.

Ivven levelled her with a look. “None of it is technically theirs to trade. It’s property of the Empire, and if they want to deal with private citizens, even they have to go behind backs.”

“Stooping to our level, huh?” Jav snorted.

“So we’re hitting this auction,” Mohv began. “What’s the operation? Go in blasters blazing? Raid their ships as they arrive? Quietly sneak in and out?”

“Hopefully that last one,” Ivven said, pulling up a holo of a structural layout. “They’ve set up a few collapsable, temporary facilities to house their events, and shield their ships.”

Shaltho chittered. “Those are smuggler structures. Prefab.” She looked up at Ivven. “Almost ironic.”

Ivven gave her a knowing, barely-there smirk. “Exactly. Which means we have a perfect layout map of the facility.” An illuminated path traced through the structure. “This indicates the most likely locations of interest. This room, likely the auction house. This area, they’ll leave their ships. I expect they’ll be living in them when the actual events aren’t taking place, so we will need to strategize when and where to hit based on where all the people will be at any given time in relation to our targets.”

She pulled up the next holo.

“The Nautolans want what is theirs back, but they can’t be connected to the theft,” Ivven said. “If a common pirate were to lift it though...”

“Like us?” Jav surmised.

“...they could avoid suspicion, _ and _ Imperial retaliation.”

Two odd object floated in flickering holographic form in the center of holotable.

“This is what we’re after,” she said.

“What are they?” Jav asked plainly.

“Very old. Very useless,” Ivven explained. “Purely sentimental and historic to the people of Glee Anselm. Simple art installations.”

“I can kind of make out headtails in that one, I guess,” Jav said with a shrug. He looked at Ivven. “So we’re stealing back artifacts and returning them to their rightful peoples. Wow, that’s… actually kind of like a  _ good person _ thing to do.”

Ivven put up a hand and made a face. “Let’s not get carried away. We’re not doing this charitably; we’re getting paid loads of credits for it.”

“So again,” Mohv interrupted. “How are we doing this?”

Ivven looked to the Falleen.

“We won’t know until we get there where the two targets are,” Ivven said. “Our sources say that  _ this _ particular piece is in the possession of Baron Teminy Rahnna, and  _ this _ one is owned by Moff Korla. Both will be in attendance.”

“So two separate hits,” Mohv said.

Ivven nodded. “Which is why I need you, potentially. One of us to hit wherever the Baron’s is being kept, and one to hit the Moff’s.”

“I’m following.”

“What about the drop?” Shaltho spoke up in her gravelly voice. “How are we approaching?”

Ivven again flicked something on the table, and a topographical map of the moon sprung to life.

“The moon’s surface is covered in these natural “pinnacle” structures with flat, mesa-like tops. Some pinnacles are wide enough to house caves or incroppings where the ship can hide further down the structure. We will have to see how exactly everyone in attendance plans to store their ships, but not everyone will fit on the main location. I suggest we hide the ship far enough away and approach on disguised airspeeders. With any luck, they’ll never know we were there. It’s not actually all that well-defended, according to initial recon; I guess they figure the planet is so sparse and the terrain so uncrossable, that they let the barriers to entry do most of the discouraging. Shaltho, you’ll stay with the ship, cover our escape if need be. Jav will accompany either myself, or Mohv, mostly likely, depending on who needs the backup.”

She collapsed the holo, revealing the faces of her companions standing around the table in sudden uninhibited clarity.

“I’ve sent over some additional information with what we’ve managed to scout about the moon, as well as potential issues,” she said in dismissal. “Please review it. We have a week to prepare.”

* * *

Ivven rolled her shoulder, rotating her arm widely above her head, trying to get her damaged side to speak to her, but it said nothing; the pain had abated.

It made her suspicious.

She dropped back into the proper ready stance.

Jav stared at her expectantly. “Now?” he finally said.

Ivven gave a tight inward sigh and nodded.

Jav answered with a scripted set of blows. Ivven blocked each one in turn, falling back a few steps to absorb them; also scripted.

It made her suspicious, because scans still showed damaged tissue, and the bacta from her time in the tank hadn’t even completely cleared her system yet, though it wasn’t uncommon that the effects tended to linger. She could still taste it at the very back of her throat sometimes.

Jav finished his volley and stepped back, falling out of stance, his back to the large bay doors of the  _ Swan _ ’s cargo bay, where there was enough room to practice like this. Ivven didn’t go to make her next move, waiting for him to drop back into form.

It served to confuse him. “...aaaare you going to go now?” he asked her.

“You’re not supposed to talk during this, you know,” Ivven pointed out.

“Why? You’re talking,” Jav reasoned.

“ _ No _ , you’re projecting; but I’m communicating all the same. You’re supposed to be reading my movements. They indicate what I’m going to do next.”

“Well I clearly don’t speak that language,” Jav deadpanned.

Ivven finally straightened up, letting her arms fall to her sides, unimpressed.

Jav rolled his eyes and dropped back down. “Alright, alright. I’ll humor you.”

Ivven took a levelling breath and raised her hands out in front of her. It ultimately didn’t matter; the mission was impending, and if her side wanted to pretend like it was fully healed, all the better.

“Go again,” she said.

Ivven heard the bulkhead door to her back open above her; she turned to look at who had entered--

\--just in time for Jav’s fist to impact on her cheekbone, a surprising pop.

“Kriff! Jav,” Ivven said, the words falling out automatically as she stumbled back a step and touched her face reflexively.

Jav’s hands flew to cover his mouth and his eyes went wide.

“ _ Sorry! _ ” he bleated. “I thought you were--”

“No, no,” Ivven waved it off, the initial startlement dissipating. “That was on me.”

Mohv laughed from above them, a single sharp syllable, and Ivven watched her grab the railing to lean over and look at them.

“Was that an Echani form?” Mohv asked.

“Yes,” Ivven confirmed, the throbbing in her cheek starting to set in.

Mohv smirked, jerking her head. “His wasn’t.”

Jav made an unamused face, deflating.

“It’s fine,” Ivven assuaged. “I was testing myself, not him.”

Mohv moved towards the staircase, dragging a hand along the rail.

“I would’ve been a better selection for that,” she said.

“Wasn’t looking to wear myself out before the mission,” Ivven explained, tracking her path. “Just filtering weaknesses.”

“Do you expect to be a problem?” Mohv asked her, stepping leisurely down the stairs and stopping half way. It would have sounded callous to most, but Ivven appreciated her candor.

“No,” Ivven said in response. “I appear to be fine. And I don’t expect trouble.”

Jav swiped at his exposed lower back with the back of his arm, then wiped the sweat off onto his shirt.

“That mean we’re done?” he asked, heading for the stairs.

Ivven nodded distantly. Jav seemed to catch the odd look in her eye, and there was the barest hitch in his step as he went to make his exit; but, he continued on anyways, up past Mohv.

The Falleen jerked her head back towards the same direction.

“Come on,” she said to Ivven. “I’d like to go over some last minute details.”

Ivven nodded, and Mohv paced back up the stairs. Ivven looked around the bay once, the open area seeming eerily quiet; or maybe it was her own internal disquiet that nagged at her. She shook it off, and climbed to the mezzanine and back into the main living quarters of the ship.

Jav stepped out of his open quarters as she wrapped her way around the hall, stopping her.

“What was that look?” Jav asked her lowly.

“What look?” she asked, turning her shoulder to face him.

“The  _ million light years away _ look,” he exaggerated.

They stood there in the dimly lit access hallway, their faces close together and speaking in hushed tones.

“Are you worried about Mohv?” he asked, even quieter.

“Not that,” Ivven shook her head. “Just… a bad feeling, about all of this.”

Jav’s lips parted and his brows knit slightly. She could see him quelling his own sudden anxiety at her words, and choosing his next carefully.

“Thought you were excited for this one for once,” he decided on. “This mission. The danger,  _ and _ the payoff.”

“It will be a bigger score than we’ve had all year,” she said, an almost canned response.

“Yeah, you’ve said,” Jav dismissed, his fingers gripping his hips. “Why the sudden hesitation?”

She held his gaze, the seconds ticking by, and realized she wished he weren’t coming.

Her lips made a sound when she moved her mouth to speak, and she stuck there for a moment. “Just nerves,” she practically whispered, and stepped around him and into the main hold, joining Mohv.

* * *

UNNAMED MOON, CYAX SYSTEM

Ivven marched up the exit ramp back into the hold, Mandalorian armor hidden by her poncho.

“Probe droid is downloaded. We have our targets.”

Mohv was similarly armored, her already impressively tall figure menacingly broad on top with the addition of plate. Ivven plugged in the scomp attachment to the holodisplay table and pointed.

“Baron Rahna’s possessions haven’t been moved into auction storage yet; they remain on his ship, which is located about ten klicks away from the facility. Moff Korla’s, however, are slated to go up for auction in about six standard hours, and are in a staging room. We have about two hours before they’re moved to a populated location.”

“I think you should go after Baron Rahna’s ship,” Ivven said to Mohv. “It won’t be as guarded as a Moff’s would be, and with any luck, anyone who would be aboard, will be in the facility monitoring the auction. Jav and I will take the target located in the facility since I’m familiar with the prefab layout. We’ll hit them at the same time, in case we trigger an alarm; we need to be on the same schedule in case anyone is alerted to our presence.”

Mohv digested the information quickly, and nodded.

“Alright,” she agreed. “Have it all uploaded to my airspeeder. Let’s get moving. We have a tight window.”

Ivven gave a matching curt nod, and turned swiftly on her heel, walking with a purpose toward Jav’s quarters while Mohv went in the direction of where the speeders were prepped. The bulkhead was open, and Jav stood in the center of the oblong room fastening the final closures of his vest. It had padded panels on the front that housed energy dissipators; Jav wasn’t accustomed to armor, and it was as close to it as she could expect to get with him with the resources at hand.

He looked up at her standing in the doorway.

“Stop it with that look again!” he told her. “You’re making me nervous. Look, my hands are shaking,” he said with a breathless laugh.

Ivven crossed to him and checked the gription attachments, tugging at the straps near his kidneys; Jav lifted his elbow out of the way, looking at what she was doing.

“You broke into a detention center three weeks ago without me,” she pointed out to him. “That was a lot scarier than this is going to be. If all goes to plan, we’ll sneak in, and sneak out. No blasters.”

He laughed again, more of a scoff, and she stepped away, dragging fingers through the crest of her head, tucking a loose strand of hair back into the braid that made a tight crown around her skull. She sized him up with a frustrating sense of nostalgia.

“You’ve… come a long way since Nar Shaddaa,” she said, even though it wasn’t entirely what she meant.

“I’m going to ask for a raise if you keep making comments that make me seem competent,” he joked, breaking the tension and gestured at the doorway.

Ivven took the out, and exited his room. He followed after her, splitting for the exit ramp while Ivven headed for the cockpit. She grabbed the top of the bulkhead frame, leaning in to check on Shaltho.

“Ready?” she asked.

“<Ready>,” Shaltho repeated, turning in her chair. “<I’ll be monitoring for you.>”

Ivven nodded, pushing off the frame and joining Mohv and Jav out by the speeders. Mohv was sitting astride the single occupancy, while Jav stood beside the larger closed-top model.

“You drive,” she said to Jav, pointing at the vehicle.

“Me?” he said, blinking.

“Why not you?” she said.

He made a ‘ _ got me there _ ’ face and walked around to the other side.

“I’m setting the chronos,” Ivven said to Mohv, pressing something on her gauntlet. “You know the time stamps. We’ll meet back here when we have the cargo.”

“See you soon,” Mohv said in farewell, kicking the speeder to life and taking off. Ivven watched her shoot out of the narrow inset they’d nested the _ Swan _ in, then disappeared over the edge.

Ivven climbed in the airspeeder, shutting them in, where Jav was already priming the systems. He pointed to a readout with a long oval fingernail.

“Doesn’t look like the weather is going to hold,” he said.

“Probably a good thing,” Ivven said. “The darker, more obscured the conditions are, the better cover we’ll have.”

He shrugged and eased the airspeeder forward toward the crevasse exit, climbing up towards the top of the pinnacle mesas as they broke free into open air. They took off at full speed once they reached the flat tops, skimming the surfaces and crossing the open distances in between. A drizzle began to streak past the transparisteel viewport in front of their faces as they crossed onto a mesa that had been outfitted as a landing pad, with prefab paneled flooring and even running lights ringing the circular outer edges; she could tell from the hazy lights that the mesa was large enough to comfortably house maybe three ships the size of the  _ Swan _ , but there was nothing currently parked there.

“Maybe they plan to do more gatherings here in the future,” Jav mused, as Ivven twisted her head to the side to scan the platform behind them. “Seems rather constructed for a pop-up.”

“I don’t like this,” Ivven muttered.

“You said yourself we might pass a few transports,” Jav said to ease her mind. “Bidders moving around the area to their ships and back. That’s why we have the  _ nice _ speeder, to blend in.”

Ivven didn’t say anything more. They shot over the edge of the mesa and crossed over to the next, leaving the platform behind.

“What does this ‘Isasha’ figure owe you that they always seem to pass you the best missions without prompting?” Jav asked suddenly. “Do you work for them...?”

“No,” Ivven said elusively.

“Who are they, then? Do they work for  _ you? _ ”

Ivven paused, then said, “You’ll meet him soon. After this mission, in fact.”

Jav looked over at her briefly, then finally shrugged and let it go for the time being. He was used to her more laconic outbursts.

Ivven watched the display as they neared the facility.

“Leave it near the other speeders outside,” she instructed. “We’ll come in on foot.”

Jav did just that, stopping at the edge of the mesa near the outside ring of parked airspeeders. They climbed out and made a side approach to the open hanger doors through the rain.

“Not exactly anxious about unwanted visitors, are they?” Jav murmured, as they walked straight into the facility. He ran his hands over his forehead and the top of his lekku, whipping the excess water gathered onto his fingers off to the side.

Ivven took down her hood, as they strafed the far wall. “Guess when you have it on an uncharted, unpopulated moon with a bunch of civilians, you tend to be a little bit more lax than an Imperial Navy operation.”

“Where is everyone?” Jav asked, almost low enough to be a whisper.

“Attending the auction,” Ivven said in response, as they stepped onto a turbolift platform made of metal slats, that raised them to the second level of the vaulted hanger bay. “The majority of who there is to run into here are packed together in a single space right now. And since everyone probably brought their own aids and security, there’s no one person in charge of the whole facility, just their individual clients.”

“Huh,” Jav grunted, as they traced their predetermined path through the halls.

“Here we are,” Ivven said, as they approached a closed doorway at the end of a hall. “This ought to be the pre-staging room.”

She pressed something on her gauntlet, holding down for a moment, sending out a frequency that should have messed with any nearby holorecorders in the next room, forcing them into a playback loop of the previous five minutes. Then she shoved a computer spike into the door panel; it squealed in protest. A few seconds ticked by, the door gave a  _ thunk  _ noise, then slid open with a whoosh of air. Jav breathed out a tense sigh, and followed her in.

The room was dark, only semi-lit, and unadorned for all the crates and treasures it housed. It would have looked forgotten, almost abandoned, had they not known this structure hadn’t existed a few weeks ago.

“Not exactly a lot of flare, huh?” Jav voiced her thoughts.

“Start scanning,” she told him, crossing to the first row of boxes. The room wasn’t exceedingly large, but they didn’t have time to waste in locating their prize. The unmonitored appearance of their surroundings made her anxious. Ivven pulled out a handscanner and started reading into the boxes.

Some treasures sat loose, in corners or in display cases. Jav made a dissatisfied noise when he passed a taxidermied creature.

“Take anything small you see that seems easy and obvious,” Ivven told him. “Most this stuff is going to be worth something, not just the one we came for. Let’s keep our options open.”

Jav laughed at the prospect.

Ivven moved onto the opposite section, atop which one of the crates sat a handcrafted object.

“Aren’t those from your world?” Ivven asked, gesturing to it.

Jav looked over at her. “New Bornalex?”

“No.”

“What, Ryloth?” he asked, finally taking a look at what she was pointing to. “Never been. Wasn’t raised particularly devout in any respect.”

Ivven shrugged, moving on to read the next labeled crate. A scanned image of its contents displayed on the readout she held.  _ Not this one, either. _

“I’ve got it,” Jav announced. Ivven looked over to him and crossed to stare at the readout.

“Yep,” she confirmed. “Let’s get it open.”

Jav unshouldered his pack and pulled out a fusioncutter and goggles, pulling the eye protection over his face and striking an arc at the seam of the crate.

“Careful,” Ivven said.

“Yep,” he replied patiently. 

He steadily melted the edges away until Ivven could peel back the surface and reach in to lift out the object. Jav dropped the cutter and kneeled on one leg to pull a length of shock-absorbing sheet from the pack next, moving with an urgent but delicate sense. Ivven laid the sculpture down and Jav gently rolled it up in the sheet, before slipping it in the pack and placing it back on his shoulders.

“Let’s get out of here,” Ivven said breathlessly, and they jogged towards the entrance from which they’d come. They didn’t seem to have triggered any alarms or encountered any security details, which was as much a blessing as it was unlikely.

Ivven pulled a comm unit from a pocket in her poncho as they stepped back onto the turbolift platform. “We have the cargo. Mohv, how are you coming along?”

“ _ It’s taking me a bit to slice through their ship’s security without triggering anything,”  _ Mohv’s voice responded. “ _ Quiet takes time. _ ”

“We’re heading back now,” Ivven said lowly, following Jav’s path as they exited back out the hanger bay. “No issues so far. You still have minutes.”

Ivven pocketed the comm unit again, and they jogged to reach the speeder, sliding in and taking off before all the systems were completely booted.

Jav let out a puff of air, several seconds long.

“That felt easy,” he announced.

“Mohv still has her part,” Ivven levelset.

“Sure,” he said. “You still worried she’s going to try to short us somehow?”

“I never was,” Ivven corrected him again, looking at him as he piloted. “Besides, we provided the transportation. She wouldn’t have a way to even if she wanted.”

“Mm,” Jav grunted.

“You don’t trust her,” Ivven stated.

Jav didn’t break eye line with his driving, but he laughed once under his breath.

“Hey, Shaltho and I were the ones who found her and hired her first,” he pointed out.

He seemed to mull her comment over.

“It’s not that I don’t trust her,” Jav prefaced. “It’s more that, every time I think I have this business figured out, you make some decision, or trust to work with some person, that confuses me, hm?”

He let his hands slide down the sticks of the directional controls slightly.

“You seem… really singular, and yet, I feel like there’s this whole system that you operate on that I never see,” Jav said, then made a face, seemingly second-guessing himself. “None of those words I just said formed a whole thought. Sorry.”

The cab fell into silence.

“Do you think you’ll do this forever?” Ivven asked him suddenly.

Jav glanced over at her, perplexed. “ _ What _ forever?”

“This.” She gestured around vaguely. “This life.”

Jav’s lips parted as he searched her eyes, then he collected himself and shrugged, looking back out the viewport.

“I don’t know. Probably. At this point I don’t think I’d even know how to have a ‘normal’ job, or the talent.” He smiled self-deprecatingly at her, a stretched-looking closed-lipped expression. “Just your average gutterscum.”

Ivven gave a tiny shake of her head.

“What about you?” he asked, seemingly nonchalant. “Do you think you’ll ‘ _ do this forever? _ ’ ”

Ivven gave a noncommittal rise and fall of her shoulders.

“What would I have to go back to?” she posed.

It drew a silence, skirting dangerously close to a topic the two pretended didn’t exist. Jav’s eyes flicked briefly down to her partially exposed gauntlets. He wasn’t an idiot; he knew what she wore under that poncho. They just didn’t address it. Jav looked away awkwardly, almost ashamed, focused very intently on his driving again.

The storm outside had turned torrential, and Ivven found herself having to force her tensed shoulders to relax as she tried to strain her eyes to see farther ahead, water whipping harshly against the outside of the speeder. When the lightning flashed, it lit the clouds in purple and blueish colors. They were having to rely on the readouts to make it back to the ship. The storm coverage was a good thing, she told herself; they’d be incredibly difficult to spot or identify. They crossed back onto the mesa that had been set up as a landing platform again, empty as before.

Ivven thought her eyes were playing tricks on her. But then Jav sat forward and she knew something was wrong.

There was a…  _ figure _ , standing in the distance, ahead of their path.

“ _ Slow down _ ,” she said, voice unintentionally strained. She felt Jav had already started to.

But it was too late. Ivven felt herself thrown hard into her restraints, then gained a weightlessness as the airspeeder was tossed end over end. They’d driven over a snare; they hadn’t even seen it before they’d hit it.

* * *

Ivven could feel herself clawing to hold onto consciousness; thankfully, it wasn’t a struggle foreign to her. She’d only been out maybe a couple of seconds; she could feel the familiar burn of a stimulant in her system, her implant having sensed her state and fired automatically. It kept her from slipping away.

She rolled her head to the side, and felt her skull scraping what must have been the crushed and compacted ceiling of the airspeeder. Jav’s unmoving form was next to her; it was only when she saw his arms dangling past his head, his lekku upturned and doing the same, that she realized they were upside down, and she suddenly felt the pressure on her sternum from where the gravity leaned her hard into her crash webbing.

That’s when she really started sensing the pain. She forcibly gasped inwards, pinched, rapid little breaths that didn’t take in enough oxygen to even exhale. It was panicked, finicky breathing that betrayed how quickly her heart was beating out of control.

Hands shaking, she laboringly lifted an arm to the other, pressing a small button on her gauntlet, and gasped in the first full breath she had managed in nearly a minute as she felt it trigger a second discharge from the implant beneath her skin, the stimulant flaming through her. The back of her nostrils stung. She would feel this one later, but she didn’t have time now to go easy.

Finally able to focus, she looked around the compartment of the airspeeder. Jav was unconscious. She had to make sure it wasn’t worse than that.

“ _ Jav _ ,” she tried to call, but it came out as a pitiful croak.

She rotated her head to look out the void that used to hold the transparisteel viewport, now blown out of its housing. What her eyes came to rest on made her blood run cold again.

The figure still stood partway across the landing platform from them, just a wisp enshrouded by the torrents of water the wind swooped into sheets. It could have been a corpse it looked so emaciated. It took several flashes of lightning for Ivven to realize its chest was heaving with each breath it took. Nearly completely naked, its skin stretched between bones, dipping in between them, his anatomic features not disguised by fat or muscle as they should have been. She could count the ribs in its chest cavity when the light crested over it. Its figure pinched in sharply at the waist, and looked as though it would snap at its midsection if battered by the wind. It stared back at her, entirely still.

Then it took a jarring step forward.

That broke Ivven from her trance. Refusing to break visual contact with the creature, Ivven worked in a frantic, but pointed manner to get her restraints undone. The stim was tearing through her system at maximum efficiency now, giving her unnatural steadiness and an acute sensory overload that would consume her when the crash inevitably came. But right now, it fueled her fervored scramble to get  _ out _ of this prison. She ejected the blade in her gauntlet and cut herself loose. She let her shoulder blades hit the ground first, working her legs out the window. She cut Jav’s restraints, too, letting him fall unceremoniously to the roof of the vehicle.

The creature, hunter, whatever it was that had taken them out, was still taking gaited steps at its hauntingly unrushed pace towards them, but it might as well have been sprinting. She was out of time. Ivven grabbed her helmet from where it had rolled out of its hiding spot in the back of the speeder and pulled it over her head. With a quick scan from her helmet’s system to confirm Jav was breathing, and that the speeder wasn’t in danger of combusting, she left him where he was, protected at least moderately by the broken housing of the speeder, and clamored out of the structure and to her feet just in time for the creature to make its rush to meet her. She whipped the poncho from her shoulders as a final act, before they clashed together in combat.

The creature almost knocked her to the ground it hit her from above with such force; she caught it with her crossed gauntlets, and she felt her frame practically vibrate as she was forced down to her knees. She used the slickness of the wet platform to spin her legs around, knocking the being over. It hit the ground next to her and they both rolled away.

Her helmet identified the enemy for her: a Yevetha. So, it was sentient; that was surprising. Information about its anatomy began to scroll off to the side of her HUD, but she didn’t have the free focus to catch even a bit of it. It came at her again, back to its feet, and Ivven tried to pull one of her blasters; the Yevetha smacked her wrist with the side of its hand and her arm spasmed, the blaster clattering off to the side. She hissed, drawing back, but it caught her in the midsection with a smooth kick, and she flew backwards with a burst of noise. She hit the ground roughly.

The being expressed an enormous amount of energy in its blows, despite its rail-thin stature. She couldn’t tell if it was the momentum of its acrobatic fighting style that made him so strong, or simply a denseness of what muscular tissue hid beneath the unassuming rankled bones. From what she could tell, it didn’t have any weapons of its own. It was simply coming at her, out of nowhere, like a naked madman, trying to beat her to death with its bare hands and risking everything to do it. Ivven was wildly unsettled because--

\--she was losing this fight.

Under normal circumstances, Ivven would have been curious about the motivation, the origin, of who she was now fighting; whether they worked for one of auction house clients, or whether they were an unrelated third party, or at the very least, an explanation for the ferocity of its attack; but this enemy was coming at her so fast and hard that she didn’t have a second to process the  _ why _ .

Ivven scrambled away and back to her feet, and it was on top of her again before she could pull another blaster. She couldn’t get the distance she needed. It grabbed ahold of her neck with its superior reach and viced down, pulling its other hand back as if preparing a blow. Ivven managed to brace her boots on top of its feet, giving her something to stabilize herself on, enough to jerk her head out of the way as its opposite arm shot forward towards the underside of her helmet. She would have gasped in shock if she had the air, as she watched a bony stake extend from a sheath of skin on the underside of its wrist; it would have gone right through her neck and jaw if she hadn’t managed to throw him off course at the last second.

The dewclaw retracted back into its arm. Wide-eyed in horror of how close a call that had been, Ivven managed enough lucidity to return the favor; she ejected the small gauntlet blade again that she’d used to cut herself free with moments before, and it punctured the being’s arm where she gripped at the hand that held her neck. It loosed the Yevetha immediately, and it reared back. Ivven fell free, gasping in air.

It was only a momentary reprieve, because the being managed to snare her by the wrist again; she watched it eject the dewclaw with the opposite arm, stabilizing it against its own body by pinning its arm at its side at chest level, like a spear, intent to try again.

It yanked her in, but instead of allowing her sternum to be pulled straight into impalement, she pushed off the ground with both feet in a jump, and used the momentum of the creature’s tug to snap her legs up and snake them level around its waist, anchoring herself there. She flung her body backwards at the same time, the back of her helmet smacking the ground as she hung there momentarily upside down, watching the stake pass harmlessly above her.

She registered two useful things as she was wrapped around its hips with her ankles captured behind its back: one, that the creature was male, and two, that this fight was getting him off. She flexed her stomach and sailed back up with a crunch, smacking the Yevetha in the bridge of his face with the forehead of her helmet with a sickening crack. His grip around her captured arm released, and she untangled her ankles, falling back to the platform on her side as the creature stumbled back three paces. She whipped her legs around out from under her, the pooled water on the platform lashing in trails where her toes skimmed the surface. The Yevetha stalked towards her again, preparing to pile on--

\--when Ivven suddenly saw a bright light appear behind it, and the creature twisted its body just in time to avoid being completely run over by a speeder bike.

Mohv skidded the vehicle to a stop, having intercepted their battle. Ivven felt a rush of relief at the arrival of backup. She got to her feet, as Mohv made another strafing run with the speeder in the direction of the Yevetha. It dodged the couple blaster shots she squeezed off, then twisted to avoid getting hit, snaring Mohv’s raised blaster by the barrel as she flew by instead, an action that pulled Mohv from the bike and sent her spiraling to the ground a meter or so away with a burst of angry noise. Ivven had heard the snap; he’d broken the Falleen’s wrist with the suddenness of the movement. The relief Ivven had felt was short lived.

_ How. _ What  _ was _ this thing?

Mohv was alive; she pushed herself up unsteadily from the ground as the Yevetha again turned its attentions towards Ivven, tossing the blaster he’d taken from the Falleen off to the side. Ivven caught his arms with a grunt, one in either hand, but it left her open; he brought a bony knee hard up into her side and she doubled over with the momentum; she felt a concerning twinge. Mohv was coming up behind them again on foot; Ivven watched her approach from under the Yevetha’s arm where she was bent over.

The Yevetha, despite still having the advantage, seemed to decide he needed to even the numbers again, and efficiently. Twining his spindly fingers around her arm, both hands on the same limb aligned closely together, he whirled her around in a circle with incredible force, her feet leaving the ground, releasing her after making a full turn and effectively flinging her through the air. Ivven flew parallel to the floor, and when she hit the platform again, she went skidding along the water. She saw now his intention; she clawed for purchase as she careened towards the edge of the platform, but she wasn’t slowing down quickly enough.

She was going over.

Her fingers just managed to snag the running cable of striplighting that ringed the landing platform before the rest of her body careened off past into air. She tightened her fist just before her arm went taut, and she felt something tear inside just under her armpit, where her blaster wound was, forcing a ground-out scream from her. The fasteners that kept the striplighting connected to the platform ripped loose with a  _ ping ping ping _ noise, and she swung back forward on the loop of cable that formed to sag down from the edge. White-hot agony ripped through her, but she refused to let go through the pain.

As the cable steadied, she dangled over nothingness. Ivven panted, controlling fear and pain-induced adrenaline. She looked over to where the cord was still connected to the platform above her; she would have to shimmy along the length of the cable to make it back up. She grunted, trying to adjust her grip to relieve the pressure. She went to raise her other arm, but her side screamed where her blaster wound had opened back up, forcing an audible expression of displeasure from her. She couldn’t get the other arm up to the wire , couldn’t move it at all without her other hand wanting to slip free ; her body refused, and she couldn’t travel the length of the cable with one arm. She dangled helplessly by one hand over the open air that extended out below her, a fall that would kill her if she let go.

“ _ Shaltho _ …” she moaned into her helmet; but there was no response. They were being jammed. She settled for turning on her locator beacon with a series of blinks,  _ hoping _ that something would get through.

The inevitableness of her situation was sinking in. Mohv was occupied. This was it. No one was coming. This was how it was going to happen. The noise of the storm around her drained away. The pain in her side dulled her senses, and as her grip started to fail her, her body felt lighter.

But she was suddenly aware of a voice cutting through the sound of the rain hitting her armor. She tipped her helmet back to look straight up. She thought she was seeing things; but it was him. Over the edge of the platform, during a crack of lightning, she could make out Jav’s face gaping down at her.

“ _ Ivven! _ ” he was screaming in a stricken voice, trying to get her attention. He was laying flat on his stomach, reaching an arm out to her as far as he dared to dangle his body over the slippery edge; the rain was so heavy the water deluged over the sides around him.

Ivven snapped out of her daze, temporarily forgetting her handicap in the rush of desperation that flooded back into her, and tried to bring her free arm up again, a foolish action that sent a stab of agony through her that nearly caused her to lose what grip she still had on the cable. She swung drunkenly, nauseated with pain. The storm was too loud; she whipped her helmet around to gaze at the spot where the wire was still connected to the platform, and she saw Jav’s neck turn to follow. He scrambled up on his knees in understanding, disappearing for a moment and reappearing over the side of the platform where she had indicated, again on his stomach, overextending his reach in a way that made her stomach lurch, in order to blindly fumble under the edge with a hand, searching for the cable. When he found it, she felt a jerk on her end that nearly dislodged her, but she held firm, refusing to give in to the way her muscles screamed to let go.

Jav pulled the cable up length by length, and Ivven was raised with agonizing slowness closer with each tug back to platform. When she was finally close enough, Jav fisted his fingers into the fabric at the back neck of her vest and hauled her bodily up over the edge with a burst of adrenaline-fueled strength, dumping them both backwards onto the surface. 

Her body now splayed out on solid ground, Ivven felt as though she never wanted to leave it again. Expended, they both slid away from the immediate danger of the edge on their stomachs. Jav’s hand never left her back, as though afraid she would be pulled off the platform again if it did. 

When they finally pulled themselves up to their knees, Jav rested both hands on either of her upper arms, arranging her to face him so he could see if she was okay. His mouth gaped open as he stared at her, like he was shocked they were both alive. Their ragged breaths heaved their shoulders.

Ivven realized with a jolt that she was wearing her armor, instinctually wanting to turn away from him; but she was frozen. Their gazes seemed to lock, even through her opaque visor. It was as if he could see through the helmet to her, and Ivven felt suddenly insecure, readable. Rivulets of rainwater streamed over Jav’s face. The moment seemed to drag for minutes, but only mere seconds passed. There was nothing to say, and yet Ivven felt speechless.

Her consciousness of their surroundings came flooding back to her like the noise of the rain flooded around them.

She broke the stare with a quick snap of her helmet to the side. Mohv was still toe to toe with the Yevetha halfway across the platform, trading blows, and Ivven was functionally unable to fight any longer. Ivven reached behind her to pull the blaster that was holstered there, levelling it with her good arm in the direction of the skirmish, as she unsteadily got to her feet; but she couldn’t take a shot without risking hitting the Falleen instead.

“ _ Mohv! _ ” she bellowed.

But Mohv struggled to keep or put a distance between herself and the mad creature just as Ivven had. It had a way of keeping so close-quarters that it was impossible to rally or raise a real offense. Mohv couldn’t get an edge in; Ivven started to take a few steps forward--

\--only to watch the Yevetha pull back, lunge, and impale Mohv straight through the head with its retractable claw.

Ivven’s mouth fell open in shock, a hot wave of disbelief rippling through her. She heard Jav scream something behind her. Mohv’s body tipped to the ground as the Yevetha retracted, and her heavy form didn’t move again when it hit the surface in a lump.

Ivven was stuck for a moment, watching the Yevetha stand over its kill as if savoring it. It turned its head to look their direction, snapping Ivven back to reality. She raised her blaster, squeezing off aimed shots, but it was hard to adjust for the sheets of rain, and the way it martially dodged the bolts as it stalked towards them.

They had to get off this platform, any way possible; away from that  _ thing _ . How they hadn’t alerted station security, or had any sort of Imperial security force sent to evaluate the disturbance yet, was beyond her. It would have been better at this point. There was no way the Yevetha was here with them; not something so _ feral _ .

Ivven whipped around to look at the adjacent stone pinnacle, the meters-wide open space between the one they were on and it; its base continued down into the depths of the chasm, disappearing beneath clouds. They needed to get below that cloud cover. They needed to get to that other pillar. That gave them the sheer cliff face of the pinnacle as their only purchase at both.

This wasn’t going to be pleasant.

Ivven double confirmed her location beacon was still pinging, that Shaltho could find them when-- if -- the jamming cleared. Then, she pulled a length of cable from her gearbelt where it attached, and beckoned Jav close. He scrambled to grab a pack off the ground that he must have taken from the speeder, shockingly the one that still held the artifact they’d come for, long forgotten by Ivven; had she any time to appreciate his foresight, she would have told him so. He shouldered the bag, and stepped up to Ivven, eyes wild with shock. She slipped the cable around his waist and clipped them together. The line automatically retracted, dragging him two stumbling steps forward until their hips were flush together. Fear flashed in Jav’s eyes as he seemed to draw a vague conclusion as to what they were about to do. Ivven twisted her body around, extending her arm and firing a connecting grappling line that whistled downwards for several concerning seconds to secure itself in the flat stone wall of the adjacent pillar, somewhere hidden under the clouds. She turned back to Jav. He was right to be scared; the distance was immense.

“This is going to hurt,” she confirmed, and Jav sucked in an unsteady breath. “But, we’ll survive,” she posed as a consolation.

Jav didn’t say anything, but the petrified expression didn’t leave his face as they took four sidesteps to the edge of the platform, his hands fisting in the fabric of her sleeves.

“Arms under mine,” she ordered. He complied.

Ivven raised her blaster again with her one good arm and tried another volley of fire, but it only served to slow the Yevetha’s approach as he serpentined to avoid the shots. She had to kill it, or they  _ had _ to jump. It grew closer and closer, until it was at a full tilt sprint. Ivven waited until it was practically upon them, its hand reaching for her blaster, before she tipped them over the edge.

She felt Jav go rigid, but to his credit, he didn’t make a sound as they began their freefall; the last thing Ivven saw was the Yevetha staring over the edge of platform at them as they dropped. Then, they passed beneath the cloud cover and Ivven lost visual.

A yell burst from her throat, taking all the air in her lungs with it, when they violently hit the end of the line with a crushing jerk. They began to swing the remaining distance at an angle towards the sheer rock face. They wouldn’t hit it head on, but they were still going to hit it hard, and there was nothing she could do to slow them. With the spare seconds she had, she wrapped Jav’s head up in her arms to protect his unarmored body from further whiplash, and as a feeble attempt to prevent his head from potentially hitting a rock wall.

It didn’t turn out to be necessary; her body collided first, taking the force. She immediately lost consciousness.


	10. Epilogue

THE SANCTUARY SWAN, SPACE

Ivven waited until Shaltho and Jav were down the hallway off to the medbay to tend to his scrapes, before she felt her knees go weak, and she collapsed against the bulkhead frame at the top of the entrance ramp, finally letting the wave of pain and weariness she was holding at bay get the better of her. She braced herself there for a solid minute, before she was sure she could stand on her own again, and scuffed off to the ‘fresher, tenderly pinning her arm to her side and trying not to jar it.

Ivven gingerly peeled off her armor when she got there, layer by layer, until it sat in a pile on the floor and she could stare at her naked reflection. She met her own eyes, her austere gaze staring coldly back at her. Her eyes seemed to sink back in their sockets in her fatigue, casting ugly shadows. Emotional exhaustion washed over her, a strange combination of disdain and numbness.

She braced herself on the basin, her eyes traveling down her body. Angry red and purple marks marred her ghostly skin, trophies from her scuffle with the Yevetha, and the unyielding cliff face. She delicately raised her left elbow away from her body, breaths coming in pinched little intakes, until it was shoulder level and she could look at the yellowish contusion that wrapped around her ribcage under her armpit and around to the outside of her breast. It had erupted anew when she’d been thrown from the platform, internally tearing the blaster injury back open. She met her own gaze again.

It caused her to inadvertently recall the eyes of her skeletal aggressor. Vacant. Sunken. Inhuman. A foe had not shaken her so badly since… well, since she’d faced her mother’s killer.

They hadn’t left empty-handed; thanks to Jav, they’d made off with at least one of the artifacts, along with a series of other minor treasures of unknown value. A partial success; but it felt like a failure. Mohv had been killed. Ivven hadn’t known the woman long, or well, but she felt at fault. Ivven’s mission, Ivven’s fault. Shaltho had managed to scoop them up, Ivven and Jav, as they dangled against the cliff face, once the  _ Swan  _ received the signal from Ivven’s locator beacon. They were now safe in hyperspace, putting distance between themselves and the events of the moon.

Ivven showered off, both a life-giving and excruciating experience in her current state, and trudged back to her quarters.

She had just finished applying a bacta patch, and was cautiously pulling on a roomy white shirt over her torso when the door to her quarters  _ whooshed _ open, and Jav stood in the doorway; a brash move, but not unexpected from him. She turned half around to look at him, tugging and rearranging the shirt around her waist over her trousers. He wore a loose-knit sweater himself, probably the least irritable thing to his own wounds, and a pair of flowing trousers, barefoot underneath. Jav stared at her, having noted the tentativeness of her movements, his expression a mixture of concern and apprehension.

“Did you dress that yourself?” Jav prompted her, gesturing towards her wounded side from across the room.

It was the first thing either of them had said to each other since getting back on the ship.

Ivven didn’t respond. Anything she could have said seemed to stick on her tongue.

“You should let someone else do that,” he offered.

She was too exhausted to have a back-and-forth. Ivven just shook her head, not a yes or a no, staring off in the corner at nothing and avoiding his eyes as she turned her side to him. She raised the elbow away from herself just slightly, a silent invitation for him to approach her.

He stepped into the room, the door shutting behind him.

A planet hung between them.

They stood next to the desk surface Ivven had pulled out from the computer terminal that was normally against the wall, where she had placed various bacta supplies and bandages, Jav carefully removing her own applied patch and repeating the process. She held her shirt up for him with her good arm, her elbow pinning it to her front, exposing her side. Ivven caught a few peripheral glimpses of him as he worked, though her gaze remained transfixed on the corner of the room. Jav had two black eyes, and nasty bruising on his forehead from where his face had clearly impacted with the brow ridge of her helmet during their fall. His lekku were scraped up from the cliff face, all that exposed skin, and she could smell the bacta salve on him. He was gentle, gentler than she could’ve imagined possible, as he carefully stuck the edges of the bandage down to her side and reattached the leads. It certainly hurt a lot less than when she had done it herself.

She remembered his face in the rain. He lifted his fingers from her skin, finished.

“Sorry. You didn’t really need my help,” he admitted with a shake of his head, appraising his work. “You’re pretty experienced at this.”

She barely heard his words, but she was acutely aware of the absence of his touch.

He turned half away from her, beginning to gather the loose supplies on the table with the intent to put them away. Ivven twisted her body around to face him in a sudden flurry of motion. Her hands flew up to stop him, but they didn’t quite make it to anything, one fisting in the fabric by the armhole of his shirt, the other resting near his neck on his exposed collarbone, their faces very close together. Jav locked up, partway through picking up a bottle of bacta salve. They both froze then, time slowing to a crawl. She still couldn’t bring herself to look him in the eyes, as though she were afraid to see what they held.

She was about to make a bad decision.

* * *

When Jav awoke, he was confused, because Ivven Oyre’s head was on his naked chest, and she was sleeping peacefully. He held still for several beats as he worked through where he was.

Gradually recalling the events that led up to this through his sleep-addled brain, he carefully bent the arm trapped under her neck until his fingertips could rake gently through the soft hair at her temples. He stroked it back with tentative, deft curls of his fingers, slowly falling in love with the way her skin felt on his.

“Uh oh,” he said into the darkness.

  
  
  
  
  


to be continued.

**Author's Note:**

> A bit about this story:  
This takes place within Star Wars Legends canon; it features original characters only.  
Selonians sound like this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DP4nqz_hwNU  
If this were a cartoon, Jav would be voiced by Michael J. Fox.  
In 5 BBY when this story takes place, Ivven is 32, Jav is 23, and Shaltho is 35.


End file.
